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. |
