Invertebrates

Evolution Says .....

The evolution of insects, worms, arthropods and other small organisms is known. Peripatus is the intermediate between worms and arthropods. Permotipula is the intermediate link of modern flies. Intermediate fossils have been found which prove this evolution.

The Facts Are .....

(1) Until recently, the oldest known 4-winged fly, Permotipula, was highly regarded as an in-between form - an evolutionary link of modern 2-winged flies (Diptera). The only fossil, found in Australia 50 years ago, actually consists of just one wing, not a complete insect specimen. Recent studies of the wing and its veins has revealed that one character which was believed to indicate a close relationship to the Diptera is absent. It cannot now be regarded as a direct ancestor of modern flies. Nature, #139 1937; Naturwissenschaften Vol. 76, 1989 p:375-377

(2) Many evolutionists point to the onychophorans, such as Peripatus, as being transitional between the worms and the arthropods. They are seen as proof of the evolution of insects and the like. World renowned evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould does not share this belief, pointing out that the appearance of arthropods should have occurred more than 550 million years ago. He believes Peripatus could not have remained in existence for that long and to have remained largely unchanged. Again evolutionary 'proofs' are just a matter of interpretation. Stephen Jay Gould, "Wonderful Life", W.W. Norton & Co, 1989 p:168

(3) Three fossils found in Shropshire (Britain) are now claimed to be the earliest known land-dwellers. These are 2 fossil centipedes and an arachnid, and are claimed to be 414 million years old. This is 20 million years older than any previously known land animals. As the centipedes are predators, there must have been land animals that evolved before they did. New Scientist, November 3, 1990

(4) Evolutionary theory states that insects and flowers evolved at the same time, as their inter-dependence today necessitates their evolution together. A detailed investigation of the fossils of 1263 families of insects by John Sepkowski Jnr. (University of Chicago) has led him to conclude that, in evolutionary terms, insects evolved 120 million years before the appearance of flowering plants. Nexus, Nov/Dec, 1993 p:16

(5) Millions of years of 'evolution' has not produced any visible signs of change in the social behaviour of ants. Samples of fossil ants found in amber show the following modern attributes:- (a) they grasp their pupae and eggs in the same way; (b) have a symbiotic relationship with nematode worms; (c) are parasitised by leg mites; (d) have all the same subcasts and stages of development; and (e) tend aphids as a source of food. W.M. Wheeler, "Social Life Among The Insects", Constable & Co.: London, 1922; Natural History, June 1982; Psyche, June, 1964; Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, January 1980

(6) "It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student, from Trueman's Ostrea/Gryphaea to Carruthers' Zaphrentis delanouei, have now been 'debunked'. Similarly, my own experience of more than twenty years looking for evolutionary lineages among the Mesozoic Brachiopoda has proved them equally elusive." Written by Dr Derek V. Ager (Department of Geology & Oceanography, University College, UK) in the article "The Nature of the Fossil Record" in Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, Vol. 87, No. 2, 1976 p:132