Answers in Genesis Articles

Show and Tell: What Can Chimps Tell Us?

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Daily Mail: Can toddlers and apes teach us lessons about how language evolved?

Are there “striking similarities” in ape and human communication, and what do they mean?

Parents eagerly await their child’s first word, recording the age at which their little one joins the verbal world of his or her elders. Speech is a developmental milestone and a uniquely human ability. Psychologists who just published their analysis of the expressive triumphs of a toddler, a chimp, and a bonobo in Frontiers in Psychology, however, are concerned not so much with the way a child learns to speak as with the implications of language acquisition for the evolutionary origins of human language.

Children and apes being raised by humans know that holding up their arms to be picked up usually works. Does that mean this ape is harboring complex abstract thoughts just needing a better mode of expression? Do a few common gestures show that humans and apes acquired those gestures from a shared ancestor? Image: www.dailymail.co.uk

Apes were taught to associate each “lexigram” symbol with its meaning and a spoken word. Image: www.frontiersin.org

Evolutionists believe human linguistic ability evolved but debate how. Nevertheless, like many evolutionary linguists, the authors of “A cross-species study of gesture and its role in symbolic development” cling to the notion that a child learning to talk recapitulates the evolutionary steps that ape-like ancestors trod as they learned to speak and think abstractly. They grasp at any ape-human similarities as support for their position.

The authors believe gestures not only provide a scaffold to help a child build the ability to speak but also mimic evolutionary steps taken by our ancient ape-like ancestors. “Because behaviors such as language and gesture do not fossilize,” they acknowledge, “evolutionary links between gesture and language are impossible to prove.”¹ Nevertheless, they say their findings support “the gestural theory of language evolution.”¹ They claim “strikingly similar” human, chimp, and bonobo gestures provide reliable evidence that a common ape-like ancestor communicated using gestures and developed a latent linguistic capacity. They maintain that evolving humans with this latent ability transformed innate gestures into speech. In other words, they believe that gestures provided a scaffold on which an ape-like ancestor grunted his way up the evolutionary tree to become human.

The researchers videotaped a little girl for one hour per month from age 8 ½ months until she was nearly two years old. They compared these videos with video footage of a chimp and a bonobo being raised in “language enriched environment [which] included ongoing activities wherein caregivers and apes communicated through gestures, lexigrams, and vocalizations, as well as daily language-testing sessions.”¹ Lexigrams (see illustration) are “arbitrary visual symbols representing words.”¹ When a lexigram was pressed, a person or electronic voice said the word. “As with human children, lexigram symbols were learned within the context of ongoing activities that were relevant to the apes.”¹

The apes’ use of lexigrams was considered equivalent to the child’s use of spoken words. After the apes were trained to associate lexigrams with their meanings, they sometimes used them to make requests. The researchers “hypothesized that all three species would exhibit a shift from greater reliance on gestures to greater reliance on symbolic communication with development”¹ and wrote, “Such evidence would support the gestural theory of the evolution of language.”¹ The child of course learned to use “spoken symbols” (i.e., to talk). However, the apes actually failed to support the theory, for the apes “continued to communicate more frequently by gesture than by symbol.”¹

The psychologists noted whenever a gesture was used alone and later combined with a spoken or pictographic symbol. This pattern was viewed as support for the theory of language acquisition through gestures. Though the researchers praised their apes for using this gesture-symbol approach to learning, they admitted that it was “statistically significant only for the child.”¹

Dr. John Oller, Jr., an expert in the field of language acquisition and communication disorders (especially autism),² describes this as only one of many examples in which “it seems that the researchers were willing to go to great lengths to try to find similar patterns even where all they got were contrasts. The gaps were so evident that only by cherry picking and strange manipulations of their data were they able to get the apes on the same scale as the human subject.”³

Furthermore, despite coauthor Patricia Greenfield’s assertion, “The similarity in the form and function of the gestures in a human infant, a baby chimpanzee and a baby bonobo was remarkable,” the child’s repertoire of “gestures” was incomparably richer than the apes’. There were a few gestures common to both child and apes, as well as some unique to each. Common gestures included reaching for a desired object, pointing to an object—which is often observed in apes and even dolphins raised in a language-rich captivity¹—and holding up the arms to be picked up. “Head-pointing”—which only occurred once for the child and once for one ape—was also classified as a common gesture.¹

The “list” of gestures unique to the apes was rather short. Once the chimp held its palm outstretched, and once the chimp guided the caregiver’s hand to the object she wanted. (That’s the whole list.) The researchers also tried to credit the apes with additional communicative behavior—such as responding to speech, demonstrating awareness of whether they had a human’s attention, and making eye contact to let the human know they were trying to communicate. Dr. Oller notes that trained dogs do the same, “but no one would claim that the dog is an immediate ancestor of humans or that barking preceded speech.”³

The child, on the other hand, displayed a wealth of meaningful unique gestures. She held up objects for her parents to see, nodded, shook her head, mimed twisting a doorknob to indicate open, waved, and used the finger-to-pursed lips symbol for shhh. The study’s authors indicated that substantial gestural similarities in the three species would support their theory.¹ But despite the success they claim, the data they report shows just the opposite. In addition to the unique gestures produced by this toddler, Dr. Oller notes that infants exhibit “smiling, laughing, facial expressions” and even “vocal turn-taking at birth.”⁴ Apes certainly fail to meet these demands upon their evolutionary cousin-ship.

Dr. Oller considers the researchers’ hypothesis—the idea that language development in a child recapitulates linguistic evolutionary steps—“unworkable.” Commenting on their “evidence,” he says,

All in all, the authors made an incredible effort to force an unworkable theory to accommodate their uncooperative data. The facts just don't support their preconceived ideas. Even when viewed through the distorted telescopic lenses of orthodox evolutionists, the kind that can supposedly see across “five to six” millions of years, the facts still show that the human child is equipped to use abstract symbols in interactions with others and, as they acknowledge, “to share experience for its own sake” (p. 10),¹ [something apes do not do].

The authors, however, find themselves at fault for the failure of their apes to compete with the uniquely human symbolic capacity: [they write,] “Given limitations of the lexigram system devised to help apes communicate with us, compared with the flexibility of human speech, gestures may be a better match than symbols for apes but not humans.”¹^,³

The limitations of a gestural language can’t get apes off the hook, though. Deaf persons adept at sign language manage to communicate using a gestural language quite nicely. Dr. Oller notes that scientific research has for decades demonstrated that humans can communicate effectively even when confined to a language of gestures. He says,

Humans excel in the use of gestures too! Did they [the authors] miss the last several decades of teaching pidgin signed languages to chimps and gorillas? It came out from all that work that deaf humans outperform apes in sign language expressions just about exactly as much as any humans outperform apes in the use of anything resembling symbolic communication.

Humans, unlike animals, are designed with an innate linguistic capacity. When children speak they are using symbols to communicate abstract ideas they already have, Dr. Oller explains. “Abstract concepts precede the use of words. . . . Children have to have the abstract ideas, the symbolic wherewithal first, before any language acquisition occurs.”³

The authors write, “Gestures seem to provide a foundation for each new stage in early linguistic development,”¹ but Dr. Oller notes that Noam Chomsky (the father of modern linguistics) ”has even argued that all the concepts for language have to be in place before any language acquisition can occur.”

The language counterfeit seen in these animals differs markedly from the true language seen developing in the child. The “language” used by the apes is a poor copy of human language because it is unsupported by abstract thought. Dr. Oller remarks, “Chomsky pondered how strange it would be to discover that apes, dolphins, and other creatures have had the language capacity all along but just never thought of using it.”³

Indeed, what sort of deep abstract thoughts might dolphins or these apes wish to communicate to their human surrogate parents? Certainly no demonstrable ones. These animals were supplied with symbols and trained to associate those symbols with familiar objects and activities. Humans supplied them with communication tools, but the animals did not replace their gestures with lexigraphic symbols. Dr. Oller says,

Apes can get something from us that resembles language, but does not quite get there.... Their argument is a little like taking a plane load of apes up in a military jet and claiming that they have taken the first needed step to becoming fighter pilots. Given a few more million years...

The work of Gillespie-Lynch and colleagues merely underlines the conclusion: the human language capacity is a product of surpassing Intelligence. It is prima facie evidence that the Invisible God made human beings with such a capacity.³

God created Adam and Eve on the same day He created land animals, about 6,000 years ago. God instructed Adam to name the animals and warned him not to eat of a particular tree, so we know that God created man with language. Man did not evolve as a primitive brute who gradually learned to talk while evolving a bigger better brain. The biblical record that God created man and woman in His own image explains why humans alone are capable of communicating unique and creative abstract thoughts with language.

For more information:

Words Are Us
More Than PIE
Ken Ham’s Blog: Lawsuit over Academic Freedom
News to Note, April 21, 2012 (Monkey see, monkey read)
News to Note, April 23, 2011 (mother tongue?)
News to Note, April 7, 2012 (clever critters)

For more information: Get Answers

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Cousin Achilles: The Little Primate That Could

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 00:00:00 GMT

The Province: New fossil of early primate relative, shows our distant cousin was cute, tiny and quite hyper

An ounce of primate prompts a pound of speculation.

A tiny primate dubbed Archicebus achilles, dated about 55 million years, is taking center stage as the oldest known primate and, at less than an ounce, the smallest. Evolutionary paleontologists believe it is the missing link between tarsier-like primates and the anthropoid primate line that includes humans. Xijun Ni, lead author of the paper in Nature, says, “This skeleton will tell us a lot of the story about the origins of primates and about our remote ancestors.”¹

This is an artist’s reconstruction of Archicebus achilles, put forth by evolutionary paleontologists as the oldest primate yet recovered from the fossil record. Researchers believe it is the missing link between the tarsier-like primates and anthropoid primates, including humans. Image: AP Photo/Xijun Ni, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences through www.theprovince.com

This is not Archicebus achilles. This is a tarsier. There are seven known species of tarsier, which may constitute a created kind of primate. Tarsiers are in the suborder Haplorrhini. The name tarsier is derived from the elongated tarsal (ankle) region. Long digits with rounded pads at the tips are able to grasp very effectively. The skeleton of the fossil Archicebus achilles has many similarities with the tarsier, but A. achilles has small eyes, short toes, and a short heel bone and therefore, while it may be of the same suborder, is not considered a tarsier. Evolutionists believe these unique features are primitive traits shared with anthropoids and therefore show A. achilles evolved soon after anthropoid primates diverged from the tarsier branch. Image: Burke Museum www.burkemuseum.org through www.answersingenesis.org

Archicebus means “original long-tailed monkey” although it resembles a tarsier, which is not a monkey. Achilles was the Greek mythological hero whose heel remained vulnerable when his mother Thetis failed to wet it in the River Styx. He lends his name to the species because its heel resembles not a tarsier’s but a monkey’s. Evolutionists therefore believe Archicebus achilles resembles the common ancestor of both.

Readers may recall a primate said to be older than this one, the 65 million year old Purgatorius from Montana. Purgatorius, represented by a box of ankle bones, drew media attention last year for evolving as a successful primate by the end of the age of dinosaurs. However, Purgatorius’s identity as a primate is in dispute. Researchers reporting on our purported little cousin Achilles hope to avoid similar controversy. They have a more complete specimen which, since being obtained from a farmer in eastern China in 2002, has been subjected to ten years of computer analysis and imaging at the European Synchroton Radiation Facility.

Advanced imaging of slabs holding the skeleton and bony impressions has produced a three-dimensional reconstruction of the fossil. Though its skull is crushed, much of its lower skeleton remains intact. Despite its small eyes, computer analysis of about 1,200 skeletal features shows it is most similar to the tarsier. However, Archicebus achilles’s heel more closely resembles a monkey’s. Monkeys, apes, and humans are classified as anthropoid primates, but tarsier-like animals are tarsiform primates. Therefore, the authors believe their fossil represents a missing link between tarsiform primates and the anthropoid lineage from which they believe humans evolved.

Christopher Beard of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, explains his team’s conclusions:

Here is a fossil that is very, very close to the evolutionary divergence of tarsiers and anthropoids. The heel and foot in general was one of the most shocking parts of this fossil when we first saw it. The foot looks like one from a small monkey, a marmoset. The heel bone is the reason we named it Achilles in the end and it looks like one from the earliest anthropoid we had evidence for. I think what it means is that the common ancestors of anthropoids and tarsiers had features that were more like anthropoids than tarsiers.²

This diagram shows the place on the primate evolutionary path assigned to Archicebus achilles. Having some features resembling tarsiers, the fossil is placed in the same suborder as tarsiers. With an assigned an age of 55 million years and a heel that is more like a monkey’s, however, evolutionists believe it is the missing link between the tarsier’s suborder and the suborder containing humans. Image: AFP/Graphic through www.google.com/hostednews

This is a digital reconstruction of the fossil Archicebus achilles. Computer analysis of the 3D images show it had more in common with a tarsier than any other known primate, but its feet were more like a monkey’s. The crushed skull also had smaller eyes than the wide-eyed nocturnal tarsier. Image: Xijun Ni et al., “The oldest known primate skeleton and early haplorhine evolution,” Nature (6 June 2013), doi:10.1038/nature12200.

The animal’s trunk was less than three inches long, and in life it weighed less than an ounce. Its teeth resemble those of insectivorous mammals. It had slender limbs, slim fingers for grasping, and a long tail. The authors believe its small eyes mean it evolved for daytime living. Xijun Ni says, “It would have been an excellent arboreal leaper, active during the daytime, and mainly fed on insects.”¹

Because it was so small, Beard believes that to avoid losing body heat A. achilles “was probably quite a frenetic animal, and even anxious. It would have moved around a lot looking for its next meal climbing and leaping around in the canopy.”²

Explaining why he considers the animal a missing link, Beard says,

Archicebus differs radically from any other primate, living or fossil, known to science. It looks like an odd hybrid, with the feet of a small monkey, the arms, legs and teeth of a very primitive primate, and a primitive skull bearing surprisingly small eyes.¹

What this new fossil is telling us is that the common ancestor of tarsiers and anthropoids really was a hybrid. It would not have been in any way completely monkeylike, but it certainly wasn't completely tarsierlike, either. It had certain features of both lineages already present.³

Primates are mammals with forward-looking eyes, five-fingered grasping hands, and five-toed feet, usually with nails. Evolutionists generally believe humans evolved in Africa and therefore tend to place the evolutionary origin of primates in Africa, but some have proposed that primates got their start in Asia.

Beard has been ridiculed for suggesting primates evolved in Asia and then migrated to Africa 38 million years ago, providing the raw material for the eventual evolution of humans from ape-like ancestors. Believing this fossil supports his position, he says, “Recent palaeontological advances have really indicated that the first and most pivotal steps in primate evolution, including the beginnings of anthropoid evolution, almost certainly took place in Asia, rather than Africa, which is the received wisdom that we all thought roughly two decades ago.”¹

“Disagreements persist regarding the palaeobiology and phylogenetic relationships of the earliest primates,”⁴ the authors write, research being “impeded by gaps in the fossil record.”⁴

Dr. Jean K. Lightner, author of recent papers concerning baraminology published in Answers Research Journal,⁵ commenting on the study, says, “Evolutionists work on the assumption of universal common ancestry, and there are many places that assumption hasn’t been going so well for them, including right here. There are gaps and disagreements on the primate family tree. This fossil, since it is relatively complete and considered old, should be helpful if their assumption of common ancestry were true.”⁶

The combination of proportions seen in this fossil’s foot—a moderately short heel like a monkey’s, a long mid-foot similar to that of a monkey (or a tree shrew), and long toes most like a tarsier’s—“is unique among living and fossil primates.”⁴ Because this combination includes subtle characteristics seen in animals evolutionists believe to be on different evolutionary paths, the researchers said the mosaic of features was “unexpected.”⁴

Dr. Lightner observes, “It certainly wasn’t expected within their framework. However, they are constrained to common ancestry, and certainly aren’t considering other options. So how do they view it?”⁶ They do not abandon a priori belief in common evolutionary ancestry of all living things. Instead, they resort to “posing novel possibilities for reconstructing how modern tarsiers and anthropoids evolved.”⁴

From the evolutionary point of view, such a mosaic of primate features must be explained by considering the animal to be at the base of an evolutionary point of divergence and revising the rest of the evolutionary scenario as needed.

Advanced imaging at the European Synchroton Radiation Facility with analysis of 1,200 skeletal features gives us great anatomical information. However, it does not provide proof that the primate evolutionary tree represents reality, either in Asia or Africa. Ten years of peering at this tiny primate reached into the rock concealing some of its parts. Yet that analysis cannot reach back into 55 million years of unwitnessed history to prove the animal was a missing link in an evolutionary progression from primates to people. The imaging studies greatly increased the anatomical information that could be gleaned about this extinct primate’s skeleton. But the presence of some skeletal features that don’t appear on any living primates just indicates the creature is a previously undiscovered species.

This study is a marvelous example of comparative anatomy. It shows a species variation that may force paleontologists to puzzle over whether the animal was a kind of tarsier or a different kind of primate altogether. But having a heel bone a little wider and shorter than those of tarsiers⁴ and small eye sockets does not mean the animal was an evolutionary missing link. The question should be “what was it?” not “what was it becoming?”

Science reveals that animals vary within their kinds, but no research shows animals evolving into new and more complex kinds of animals. Observable biology does not support molecules-to-man evolution. Extinct animals in the fossil record are just examples of biodiversity, not signposts along the hypothetical evolutionary origin of humanity. God created all kinds of land animals and man on the same day about 6,000 years ago. The record of many animals, extant and extinct, is preserved in the fossil record. But sedimentary layers containing billions of fossils are largely associated with the global Flood and post-Flood catastrophes. They represent the order of burial, not the evolution of life.

For more information:

News to Note, February 16, 2013 (forensic fantasy: fossils vs. clocks in mammalian evolution)
News to Note, October 27, 2012 (grandpa squirrel: primordial primate?)
News to Note, September 3, 2011 (Jurassic mother)
News to Note, May 28, 2011 (bigger brains from better noses)
Mammalian Ark Kinds
Determining the Ark Kinds

And Don’t Miss . . .

It has been a superlative week as we’ve covered news about the freshest mammoth, the earliest bird, and the oldest water in addition to today’s feature on the earliest primate fossil. Be sure to watch next week to see what a chimp and a bonobo really have to say about the origin of human language and to learn how sturgeons—the fish from which caviar comes—have rocked the evolutionary boat. And who knows what else will be in the News?

For more information: Get Answers

The World’s Oldest Water?

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Huffington Post: Oldest Water On Earth May Date Back Billions Of Years

Does ancient sparkling water hold the keys to life’s origins?

Scientists report they have analyzed the oldest isolated water on earth. The sparkling mineral water has been bubbling up from bore holes and fractures in a copper and zinc mine near Timmins, Ontario, since the 1880s,¹ but it only recently occurred to anyone to see how old the water might be. The researchers believe the water, trapped in tiny fractures in sulfide deposits without connections to other cracks, has had no direct or indirect contact with water exposed to earth’s atmosphere or the sun for 1.5 to 2.64 billion years.² Because the water contains methane and hydrogen, they believe it could hold evolutionary clues about the original life on Earth or even Mars.

Researchers believe water percolating up though the floor of a mine over two miles below the Canadian Shield is the oldest isolated water on earth. Image: J. Telling through www.nature.com

Geochemist Chris Ballentine and colleagues collected the water without exposing it to the air and analyzed it. He says, “We were expecting these fluids to be possibly tens, perhaps even hundreds of millions of years of age.”³ But their interpretations of the relative abundance of noble gas isotopes suggests even greater antiquity, 1.5 billion years at a minimum. Coauthor Barbara Sherwood Lollar says, “These are the oldest waters that have ever been identified. The Canadian Shield is some of the oldest rocks on Earth. These are billions of years old. And what we've shown is despite that, these fractures are still releasing water that are full of energy that could support life. We don't know yet if there's life in this, but what we've been able to show is it is habitable, meaning [having the] potential to support life because of the energy that's there.”

Some microbes are able to subsist without oxygen and sunlight. Some of these have been found deep in a South African gold mine supposed to be millions, though not billions, of years old. Such chemoautotrophic microbes live in the toxic environment of hydrothermal vents deep beneath the oceans, too. Therefore the researchers believe that non-oxygen-dependent microbes may have evolved and been preserved in this sort of isolated “deep water” environment. Lollar says, “It's loaded with dissolved chemistry that actually can support life. We're understanding that there is deep life, that it's run by a different kind of energy, often. What we're really interested in now is finding out more about the nature of that kind of life. . . . It will help us understand how much of our planet is actually habitable. Are we really just a thin film of life on the surface? Or how prevalent is this subsurface life and what percentage of the world's overall biomass is down there?”

The researchers believe the water they’ve found could give them a snapshot of earth before it developed an oxygenated atmosphere. Ballentine indicates the discovery may be relevant to evolutionary biology because the ancient water isolated in these small interconnecting fractures may have provided “secluded biomes, ecosystems, in which life, you can speculate, might have even originated,” he says, adding, “There is no reason to think the same interconnected fluids systems do not exist there.” Lollar explains, “Much of the Mars crust is similar to our ancient (Canadian Shield). It's also billions of years old crystalline rock, with a similar geography to the Timmins site. It's reasonable to think that same process could be going on today in the depths of Mars.” The researchers have not yet found any evidence of microbial life in their samples but plan to look. The assertion that the water bubbling up beneath the mine is the oldest on earth and over a billion years old is based on the usual unverifiable worldview-based assumptions on which the interpretations of radiometric data is based, isotopes of noble gases (like xenon, argon, helium, and neon) notwithstanding. Answers in Genesis geologist Dr. Andrew Snelling has reviewed the reported research and explains:

Their whole argument depends on two key issues, namely, the radiometric age of the host rocks the water came out of, and the excess ¹²⁹Xe in the water above the level normal in air, which is believed to have been derived from radioactive decay of ¹²⁹I. The measured ^{124,126, 128}Xe levels are compatible with the assumed values in an atmosphere that evolved over billions of years. So it all boils down to the reliability of radiometric dating and the assumptions on which it is based, including the assumption that radioactive decay rates, including that of ¹²⁹I, have always been constant at today’s measured rates.

The notion that earth once had a non-oxygen atmosphere is likewise an unproven assumption needed to create an imaginary ancient environment in which chemicals could make evolutionary progress toward becoming alive without getting oxidized (and thereby destroyed). The various assumptions on which radiometric dating methods are based are explained further at the links listed below. Dr. Snelling also notes the extreme inconsistency of the reported “dates” assigned to the water. He says:

Their results are inconsistent. They report the average groundwater residence times based on radiometric dating as
1142 +/- 645 (i.e. 497–1787) million years using ⁴He,
1655 +/- 789 (i.e. 866–2444) million years using ²¹Ne,
1498 +/- 784 (i.e. 714–2282) million years using ⁴⁰Ar, and
1610 +/- 825 (i.e. 785–2435) million years using ¹³⁶Xe.
These represent error margins of between 47 and 56%!

Such error margins would be quite unacceptable for an engineer designing a bridge, but they make headlines when they are put forth in support of evolutionary dogma. It is impossible to know whether the water in these rocks really dates from the time of Creation or not. Dr. Snelling explains:

As for the likelihood that this water has been isolated from the atmosphere and sun since ancient times, their argument is too bound up in assumptions related to radioactive decay rates. Since some of the host rocks are volcanic in origin, and they have subsequently suffered from low grade metamorphism, one could equally argue that the heat and pressures should have squeezed out the original water, so what’s there now could have been introduced much later. The host rocks are likely related to the late stages of the effects of the upheaval to make the dry land on Day 3 of Creation Week (Genesis 1:9–10) and the resulting water movements during the last part of the Creation Week, and water could have then been reintroduced to them when the Flood began. Either way this water is no older than 6,000 or so years.

If microbes like those that thrive in the dark toxic chemicals of hydrothermal vents are found in the water, they will not be evidence for abiogenesis but only examples of earth’s biodiversity. No biological research has ever demonstrated that life emerged through random natural processes from non-living chemicals. Despite claims to the contrary, evolutionary efforts to explain the origin of life without God are worldview-based, not evidence-based. Likewise, if evidence of microbial life is ever found on Mars, it will not prove evolution generated life from lifelessness nor would it undermine the historical fact that God created all life and the entire universe about 6,000 years ago.

Creationists are not shocked to find exotic life-forms thriving in unusual places. Even if this water has truly been isolated from the atmosphere and sunlight for a long time, and even if microbes are found in it, that would not demonstrate that evolution happened or that the microbes are descendants of a primitive life form. It would only be another example of microbial biodiversity. When God created the earth and filled it with living things, He created fully functional creatures suited for many environments and with the capacity to adapt to others. The “extremophiles” may well have occupied a crucial ecological niche from the beginning.

For more information:

Deep-Sea Vents—Life’s Toxic Sanctuary
News to Note, May 14, 2011 (toxin lovers)
News to Note, February 11, 2012 (subglacial science)
More Abundant than Stars
News to Note, February 2, 2013 (Martian water of life?)

For more information: Get Answers

Is the Dawn of the Early Bird Too Good To Be True?

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 00:00:00 GMT

National Geographic: New Candidate for World's First Bird and Science: Earliest Bird Claim Ruffles Feathers

A bird by any other name . . .

Feathers are ruffled in the evolutionary community because the newest candidate for the world’s first bird upsets the currently popular claim that Archaeopteryx was not a bird at all. Pascal Godefroit and colleagues can only achieve bird-status for their non-feathered fossil if the slightly “younger” and clearly feathered Archaeopteryx can be called a bird. While evolutionists worldwide argue over just how the evolutionary history of birds should be adjusted this time, some seek to snatch victory from the jaws of inconsistencies by proclaiming that the fuzziness of dinosaur-bird definitions actually proves that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

Aurornis xui is a well-preserved fossil that reportedly came from 160 million year old rock in China’s Tiaojishan Formation. Pascal Godefroit and colleagues believe it represents the earliest member of Avialae, the branch of dinosaurs from which evolutionists believe birds directly evolved. Joining Aurornis on this bird branch, however, is Archaeopteryx, an assertion which is ruffling many feathers among evolutionary pundits. Image: nature.com

The conundrum concerns the chicken-sized Aurornis xui. Aurornis is said to have originated in Liaoning province's Tiaojishan Formation. Aurornis was found by a farmer, acquired by a fossil dealer, and sold to Yizhou Fossil & Geology Park. Since the scandalous appearance of the Chinese “Archaeoraptor,” a forged feathered dinosaur that National Geographic in their November 1999 magazine hailed as the dinosaur-bird “missing link,” paleontologists analyzing fossils obtained from Chinese farmers and fossil dealers often include in their papers a statement declaring faith in their fossil’s authenticity. The article in Nature concerning Aurornis—whose Latin name means “dawn-bird”—contains just such a statement of authenticity in its supplementary materials. Nevertheless, the fossil is so perfect that some have suggested that Aurornis is a forgery.

“I would take a skeptical look at this specimen,” evolutionary paleontologist Luis Chiappe of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County says. “The fact that it is so neatly arranged and so complete makes it suspicious.” The researchers base their belief in Aurornis’s authenticity on the fact that its shale slab looks like the sort of shale encasing Liaoning’s feathered Anchiornis. They could not detect “any trace of forgery”¹ and therefore write, “The probability that the specimen is a composite is accordingly low.”¹ Godefroit, of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and lead author of the report in Nature, is offended that anyone would question the authenticity of feathered fossils or the appropriateness of re-drawing the evolutionary history of birds on the basis of such fossils of uncertain origin. He says, “If farmers did not start collecting specimens in Liaoning, nothing would be known about feathered dinosaurs and bird evolution in China.”²

Aurornis xui" />This artististic reconstruction of Aurornis xui contains more art than science. The actual fossil, though well-preserved, has no pennaceous feathers at all and only slight traces of bundles of filaments that evolutionists claim are plumaceous feathers. Image: Masato Hattori through news.nationalgeographic.com

The real irony of this drama is that the Aurornis fossil doesn’t have any feathers, at least none that even the mass media is ready to exult over, in spite of the glorious plumage painted onto the artistic reconstruction that is making the rounds (see illustration, right). For example, ScienceNews reports, “There isn’t any well-preserved plumage on the new specimen, but Godefroit says that the shapes of bones in the fossil’s pelvic region are part of what make him think the animal was a bird.”³

Although the “best” feathers the authors can report are only “traces of plumulaceous feathers,”⁴ Chiappe doubts Aurornis is a real bird for other reasons: the forelimb is too short for a bird, the tail is reptilian, and the skull has features more consistent with a dinosaur. He says, “This is very birdlike, but it is not yet a bird.”³

The problem, from the evolutionary point of view, is that the dinosaur-bird ancestral tree got re-drawn in the last few years, largely on the basis of Chinese paleontologist Xing Xu’s work with so-called feathered dinosaurs. Xu is troubled that Godefroit’s study bumps several “feathered dinosaurs” back into the “bird” category, commenting, “Their analysis also produced several results inconsistent with those of most recent studies. I don't consider this piece of work as a final solution.”

Following the discovery of the truly feathered Anchiornis and the apparently featherless Xiaotingia, Archaeopteryx was not only supplanted as the “first bird” in the evolutionary saga but even bumped off the bird list. Archaeopteryx was removed from the Avialae branch of the phylogenetic tree, the branch of dinosaurs that evolutionists believe directly gave rise to birds. Despite its obvious feathers and its classification for 150 years as an extinct bird, the creature’s “birdiness” has remained in dispute.

The analysis of Aurornis compares nearly a thousand skeletal details with those of other fossils, especially Archaeopteryx and Anchiornis—fossils that clearly have pennaceous feathers. Beginning with the assumption that an evolutionary progression must exist, subtle similarities in many minor bony details achieve evolutionary significance through the magic of statistics. Therefore, despite the reptilian tail, dinosaurian skull, and short forelimb noted by Chiappe, Aurornis emerges as a bird. And because the Tiaojishan Formation from which Aurornis is supposed to have originated is conventionally dated around 160 million years old,⁵ Aurornis not only seizes the brass ring of “earliest bird” but also restores the German Archaeopteryx (dated at about 150 million years) to the avian succession. Godefroit places Aurornis, Anchiornis (also from the Tiaojishan Formation and dated at 150–160 million years but considerably more bird-like, having real feathers), and Archaeopteryx all in the basal evolutionary bird slot, Avialae. He says, “This new comprehensive phylogeny, or evolutionary development, shows that point of origin avialans were already diversified in northern China during the Middle-Late Jurassic.”⁶ Coauthor Andrea Cau explains that Aurornis is “among the earliest birds, being it’s both older and apparently less ‘bird-like’ than Archaeopteryx along the ‘bird branch.’”

It is this lack of bird-characteristics that troubles Aurornis’s bid for the early bird title. Evolutionists interpret this non-birdiness as proof the creature is very primitive. Therefore, Godefroit’s team can only classify the fossil as a bird if they can show it shares the characteristics of an extinct but more highly evolved bird. And that is why Archaeopteryx must be a bird for this early bird claim to hold water.

Some evolutionists consider this primitive problem to be not so much a problem as proof of evolutionary relationships. Chiappe says,

The problem we are facing these days is that all these animals are anatomically very similar, and our definition of birds—arbitrary as it is—sets a line between what is and what isn't called a bird. [emphasis ours] ... What the [evolutionary phylogenetic] trees —and the new fossils—are telling us is that back in the Jurassic, 150 to 160 million years ago, many different types of dinosaurs were experimenting with ‘birdness.’ And it is from this ‘birdness soup’ that true birds originated.

Evolutionary author Brian Switek says the frustrating and confusing problem of dino-bird classification has made a positive contribution to paleontology by leaving “no doubt that birds are dinosaurs.” In essence, the hypothetical common evolutionary ancestor of dinosaurs and birds would need to have characteristics present in all its presumed descendants. Thus the fuzzy distinctions between the shifting definitions of “bird” and “dinosaur” become an advantage for evolutionists seeking to invent or identify a common ancestor.

A few months ago we received a lot of criticism for saying that the feathered Eosinopteryx was not a dinosaur but a flightless bird. Now Godefroit’s team is reaping criticism for asserting that feathered fossils like Archaeopteryx and Anchiornis are birds. The common thread here, ironically, seems to be that calling an extinct creature with real feathers a bird is a sure path to derision.

So why can’t a feathered animal be a bird? And why must indistinct non-feathery filaments on some dinosaur fossils be defined as “protofeathers”? The public, which is being re-educated to ignore the obvious distinctions between birds and dinosaurs, may ultimately accept the notion that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Furthermore, evolutionists, unable to produce actual transitional forms, can create them by simply redefining classification categories to reflect evolutionary presuppositions, blurring previously straightforward distinctions.

God created all kinds of birds on the fifth day of Creation Week about 6,000 years ago, and He created the land animals including dinosaurs the next day. He said that He created them to reproduce after their kinds. Biologically, animals do just that, varying within their created kinds. Saying that obviously feathered animals are not birds because doing so upsets evolutionary beliefs does not make those evolutionary beliefs true or prove biblical history untrue.

We don’t claim, on the basis of the material published so far, to know what kind of animal the Aurornis was. Apparently neither do world-renowned evolutionary paleontologists, some of whom are so upset by the claims made about this well-preserved fossil that they suspect foul play in its provenance. One thing is certain, however: paleontologists have tinkered with the meanings of common words so much to make them match their evolutionary presuppositions that simple words like dinosaur and bird and even feather are practically devoid of meaning.

For more information:

News to Note, July 30, 2011 (Oldest bird knocked off its perch; Xiaotingia )
News to Note, October 3, 2009 (Anchiornis)
News to Note, November 17, 2012 (Feathered phylogeny)
News to Note, February 9, 2013 (Queries about the little feathery “whatsit”)
News to Note, February 2, 2013 (Tiny dino?)
Did Dinosaurs Turn Into Birds?

For more information: Get Answers

Mammoth Questions: Of Blood, Biological Antifreeze, and Clones

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 00:00:00 GMT

The Siberian Times: Exclusive: The first pictures of blood from a 10,000 year old Siberian woolly mammoth and Scientific American blog: Fact Check: Does That New Mammoth Carcass Really Preserve Flowing Blood and Possibly Live Cells?

New mammoth discovery animates clonal hopes.

The Siberian Times announced May 29 that scientists led by Semyon Grigoriev had found a well-preserved mammoth overlying a pool of liquid mammoth blood. In the wake of recent success creating human embryonic clones as well as the current debate over the ethics of “de-extinction” by cloning,¹ visions of a Jurassic Park reality immediately began dancing across headlines.

“We were really surprised to find mammoth blood and muscle tissue. It is the first time we managed to obtain mammoth blood,” Grigoriev said. “The blood is very dark; it was found in ice cavities below the belly and when we broke these cavities with a poll pick, the blood came running out. Interestingly, the temperature at the time of excavation was –7 to –10 degrees Celsius [19.4 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit (+)]. It may be assumed that the blood of mammoths had some cryoprotective properties.”²

Michael Oard, author of Frozen in Time: The Woolly Mammoths, the Ice Age, and the Biblical Key to their Secrets as well as the children’s book Uncovering the Mysterious Woolly Mammoth: Life at the End of the Great Ice Age, comments that any sort of biological antifreeze “would be unique in a mammal of this size, although it has been discovered in ground squirrels at blood temperatures down to only –3 degrees Celsius. Other organisms also have natural antifreeze but [none sufficient for temperatures] that cold.” Grigoriev reports they “tried to freeze the substance to –17 degrees Celsius and it remained liquid,” Oard notes. Thus it was “a supercooled liquid.” While the possibility of a biological antifreeze bears investigation, Oard points out that the liquid was “not found in the carcass, but in the ice below the carcass. . . . There is the question that it is not pure blood but is contaminated, so further analysis is warranted.” University of Michigan’s Daniel Fisher, who has worked with Grigoriev in the past, agrees, saying, “Whether it is exactly blood, and only blood, will of course require a little more analysis, including some microscopic examination.”

Nevertheless, Oard notes, if the mammoth did have a biological antifreeze, it would be “an amazing adaptation . . . that shows creation with design.” Canadian researchers, comparing fragments of mammoth DNA to that of the Indian elephant, reported in 2010 that mammoth hemoglobin has an unusually low oxygen affinity at low temperatures, an adaptation that allowed woolly mammal hemoglobin to release oxygen to tissues efficiently despite frigid conditions.³ Thus, it is already apparent that mammoth blood possessed at least one adaptation for extreme cold, and analysis of this liquid could reveal another.

Semyon Grigoriev of the Museum of Mammoths at Yakutsk‘s North Eastern Federal University discovered this partially scavenged mammoth on one of the frigid Arctic Lyakhovsky Islands in the Novosibirsk archipelago. Some muscle tissue appears red and fresh. The carcass lay over a dark liquid, possibly blood, which had collected in an ice cavity. Images: Semyon Grigoriev at siberiantimes.com

Kevin Campbell was involved in reconstructing the gene for mammoth hemoglobin. He says, “If the fluid (‘blood’) sample is as well preserved as the muscle, . . . there is the possibility that red blood cells are still intact. . . . The first step—from an oxygen-binding study perspective—is to look for red blood cells and then isolate hemoglobin from all the other proteins/cell debris in the sample. Since the sample was collected from outside the body, it is likely that there is also ‘contamination’ from myoglobin and possibly bacteria (for example). Based on the color alone, I think it is pretty safe to say that there is indeed a fair amount of hemoglobin (and possibly myoglobin) in the vials.”

“Many insects (and some vertebrates) are able to avoid freezing at far colder temperatures via the expression of antifreeze peptides/glycoproteins and (largely carbohydrate-based) cryoprotectants, which can dramatically lower the supercooling point (roughly equivalent with the freezing point). If mammoth blood had this trait, they would be the only known mammalian example of this to my knowledge,” Campbell says. “I highly (very highly) doubt that circulating mammoth blood was able to supercool to –17ºC—though it is worth testing the samples to see why they are still ‘fluid.’”

Mammalian body fluids ordinarily freeze at –0.6ºC. This liquid, being found outside the body, may have become concentrated in the arid Arctic air, causing it to remain liquid at even lower temperatures than it would have as circulating blood.

This mammoth has been partially scavenged. “The upper torso and two legs, which were in the soil, were gnawed by prehistoric and modern predators and almost did not survive,” Grigoriev said. “The forelegs and the stomach are well preserved, while the hind part has become a skeleton.”⁴ Based on the teeth, he estimates this female mammoth was 50–60 years old when she died.

While this mammoth is not intact like the famous baby mammoth Lubya discovered in 2007, Grigoriev says the appearance of the remaining parts suggests that it is “the best preserved mammoth in the history of paleontology.” He says, “The fragments of muscle tissues, which we’ve found out of the body, have a natural red color of fresh meat.” Grigoriev suspects “the reason for such preservation is that the lower part of the body was underlying in pure ice, and the upper part was found in the middle of tundra.”² As a result, the protected parts “did not defrost and then freeze again.” While Lubya remains the most intact mammoth specimen ever recovered, Lubya’s carcass had undergone a great deal of breakdown of tissues at the cellular level. Other less intact mammoths (like Khroma and Yuka), and hopefully this one, appear to have frozen soon after death and are therefore better preserved at the cellular level.

Mammoth experts from many quarters agree this appears to be an incredible find but are for now withholding judgment regarding the nature and significance of the findings. The team collected “all possible samples: samples of blood, blood vessels, glands, soft tissue, in a word—everything that we could.” Then they transported the carcass overland (and over ice) to a mainland icehouse so that it would not defrost. They plan to examine it there with an international team of colleagues later this summer.

Given the degree of preservation, Grigoriev said, “This find gives us a really good chance of finding live cells,” though he realizes “even in such a good condition of the carcass the chances of this [finding at least one living cell preserved] are small.” A South Korean group at Sooam Biotech Research Foundation has long sought to clone a mammoth. However, cloning requires more than knowledge of an animal’s complete genome—and even that would be hard to come by. Cloning would require an actual living cell. Its nucleus, containing intact mammoth DNA, would have to be transplanted into a donor egg (oocyte) from an elephant. The resulting fused cell, once coaxed to behave as an embryo, would then be placed in the uterus of a surrogate elephant mother. Such an animal would not, of course, have access to the sort of environmental influences the originals enjoyed. And even under the best of circumstances, cloned animals are prone to life-shortening health problems.

Most experts believe this mammoth is unlikely to have intact, clone-able DNA. Fisher says, “In general, ancient DNA is highly fragmented and by no means ‘ready to go’ into the next mammoth embryo.” After all, reconstructing the ancient gene sequence for specific proteins like hemoglobin from DNA fragments, as Campbell and colleagues have done, is a far cry from finding an entire genome intact. “Even under the best circumstances, DNA in long-dead specimens, if it has been preserved at all, persists in exceedingly small amounts,” Hofreiter and Campbell write. “It is also highly fragmented and riddled with chemical damage.” ³

Ancient DNA expert Beth Shapiro of the University of California, Santa Cruz, concurs. “I don’t think it’s impossible that there is some blood in such a well-preserved find.” However, she adds, “I strongly, strongly suspect that there will be zero intact cells in the find, regardless of whether blood is preserved. Without an intact, functional cell—one that can be de-differentiated into a stem cell in a petri dish—one cannot clone this animal.”⁵ Because DNA begins to breakdown at death, the best most scientists would hope for would be a patchwork of genomic data, not even a complete genome sequence.

Shapiro says it is unfortunate that media-driven “cloning hype”⁵ eclipses the value of the information that may realistically be obtained from this exciting discovery.

Nevertheless, while we’re a long way—and probably infinitely far away—from “Mammoth Park” or even “Molly the mammoth clone,” the similarity of elephants and mammoths suggests they are varieties of the same created kind. And given that mammoths seem to have had a cold-adapted hemoglobin and may have had some sort of biological antifreeze, the woolly mammoths illustrate the sort of adaptive variation that can occur within a created kind of animal.

Mammoths could thrive in the post-Flood Ice Age, which was brought on by the unique conditions associated with the aftermath of the global Flood. So why do mammoths not roam the earth today? Read more about how dramatic climactic changes later in the Ice Age likely caused mammoth extinction at “Chapter 16: Extinction of the Woolly Mammoth.”

For more information:

And Don’t Miss . . .

Be sure to check out the common cockroach’s latest secret of sweet success, find out how chimpanzee and human DNA can really be 70%, 96%, and 99% similar and still offer no support to evolutionary claims, and explore some common evolutionary misinformation about flightless birds by soaring and diving with a high energy Arctic seabird. Check out the details of human cloning technology in “Like Dolly, Only Human: How They Cloned Humans, and Why They Should Stop.” And be watching next week to get a biblical perspective on what’s being said about the world’s oldest water, the world’s earliest bird, and an itsy-bitsy primate named Achilles . . . and who knows what else will be in the News?