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Another Big Mistake in Evolution BY FRANK SHERWIN, D.SC. (HON.) * |

https://www.icr.org/article/another-big-mistake-evolution/

The strange and wonderful coelacanth1 has long been a challenge to evolutionists.

The coelacanth has long been hailed as an ancestor to amphibians and other tetrapods as their lineage goes back a supposed 300 million years. However, the exact origin of coelacanths has never been established by evolutionary scientists, the fish just seem to appear in the rocks “suddenly” like most all fossil organisms. And modern coelacanths were also found to give birth to live young (like some sharks), unlike their supposed descendants, the amphibians.2

The living version of this “fossil”3 has recently surprised evolutionists.4 A significant portion of the cranial musculature of the “ancient” coelacanths was found to be wrong. By reanalyzing “the skull musculature of coelacanths, a group of fish that has existed for 400 million years, [researchers] concluded that many structures had been incorrectly described.”5

Evolutionists writing in Science Advances stated,

Despite being one of the most iconic living vertebrates, we found a plethora of errors in the identification of cranial muscles in the African coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae), some of which have been replicated for nearly 70 years. Given the key position of coelacanths in the vertebrate tree of life, correcting these errors has profound implications for understanding the early gnathostome evolution.6

Because of these glaring mistakes, it

means foundational assumptions about how vertebrates, including humans, evolved to eat and breathe may need to be rewritten. The discovery corrects decades of anatomical errors, reshapes the story of skull evolution, and brings unexpected insights into our own distant origins.5

Contradictions and misidentifications abound in this recent coelacanth discovery.

“There were many contradictions in the literature. When we finally got to examine the specimens, we detected more errors than we’d imagined. For example, 11 structures described as muscles were actually ligaments or other types of connective tissue. This has a drastic consequence for the functioning of the mouth and breathing, because muscles perform movement, while ligaments only transmit it,” [Datovo] explains.5

Aside from these errors, Science Daily also reported on the supposed implications for where coelacanths fit in evolution, “From images of the skull bones of other fish from completely extinct lineages, Datovo and Johnson were able to infer where the muscles found in coelacanths would fit, elucidating the evolution of these muscles in the first jawed vertebrates.”5 Not only is such an exercise subjective, but the first jawed vertebrates—evolutionarily speaking—have yet to be found.

The ancestral vertebrate (protovertebrate) has been sought for more than 100 years, and the likelihood of finding it today is not much greater than in the past. It can be assumed that the protovertebrate was small and soft-bodied, two factors that suggest the improbability of finding a fossilized form in a recognizable condition.7 (Emphasis added)

In their Science Advances article, Datovo and Johnson appeal to homology (which is a “controversial term”8) to make their case for connecting “coelacanth muscles with those of other jawed fishes.”6 But William Dembski and the late Jonathan Wells wrote in The Design of Life that

Neo-Darwinists continue to defend their conjunction of homology with common ancestry, whereas critics object that it confuses definition with explanation and leads to circular reasoning. The [late] philosopher of biology Ronald Brady, one of the more outspoken critics of neo-Darwinism in the last generation, observed, ‘By making our explanation into the condition to be explained, we express not scientific hypothesis but belief . . . Dogmatic endeavors of this kind must eventually leave the realm of science.’9

These incomplete evolutionary lineages and controversial explanations point to the bigger mistake that evolutionists believe: that the strange and unscientific vertebrate tree of life, as mentioned in the Science Daily5 and the Science Advances6 articles, is true even though it is only hypothetical.10 The nodes on the tree of life, places where there should be a common ancestor of two given species, are always empty. Indeed, Datovo and Johnson said,

It is currently impossible to indicate at which node of the sarcopterygian tree the attachment of the spiracularis [muscle] to the palatoquadrate [muscle] evolved. In any case, the presence of the spiracularis is probably primitive for gnathostomes, since acanthodians, placoderms, and some extinct agnathans apparently had functional spiracles.6 (Emphasis added)

W. Ford Doolittle is an evolutionary bioinformatics specialist, and he said that “the history of life cannot properly be represented as a tree.”11

Despite these objections to the tree of life and common ancestors, conventional scientists continue to assume evolution is fact and try to explain how it occurs and why it doesn’t happen when stasis is evident. The Science Daily article tried to explain the stasis in fossil and living coelacanths with slow changes of their genome: “One reason they have changed so little since the extinction of the dinosaurs is that they have few predators and live in a relatively protected environment. This has resulted in slow changes to their genome, as shown by a 2013 study published in the journal Nature.”5

But few predators and general environmental safety don’t adequately explain how little these fish have changed. ICR’s Brian Thomas addressed this.

A team led by German researchers from Ruhr-University Bochum published the first genetic population survey of these storied fishes in the journal Current Biology. They analyzed DNA sequences from 71 adult coelacanth fish.

The team analyzed the most variable region of the mitochondrial chromosome, the “d-loop.” After 400 million years, different fish populations should show significant differences, but only 8 of 726 coelacanth d-loop base pairs showed variation. Such a low number of differences is easily explained if coelacanth are only thousands of years old.4

Dr. Thomas went on to say, “To have only produced 8 out of 726 base pairs in mitochondrial DNA’s most highly variable region after 400 million supposed years would be a rate so ‘extremely slow’ that it defies credibility.”4

Yes, science is self-correcting, and humans—even evolutionists—are fallible. It was helpful for ichthyologists to discover that a substantial portion of the cranial musculature of the supposedly ancient coelacanths was wrong. But correcting these mistakes within the irrational evolutionary, deep-time paradigm will never lead zoologists to connect the dots within the gnathostomes (jawed vertebrates). The roadblocks include homology, the vertebrate tree of life, the lack of transitional forms, and the coelacanth genome. The coelacanth and other fish were created on Day 5, just thousands of years ago.

References

Sherwin, F. Fossil Fish Finally Filmed. Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org May 19, 2025. Clarey, T. and J. Tomkins. Coelacanths: Evolutionists Still Fishing in Shallow Water. Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org April 29, 2013. Thomas, B. Should We Drop the Term ‘Living Fossil’? Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org July 18, 2016. Thomas, B. Lobe-Finned Fish Supplies Surprises. Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org August 24, 2012. 400-Million-Year-Old Fish Exposes Big Mistake in How We Understood Evolution. Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo. Posted on sciencedaily.com July 29, 2025. Datovo, A. and D. Johnson. 2025. Coelacanths Illuminate Deep-Time Evolution of Cranial Musculature in Jawed Vertebrates. Science Advances. 11 (18). Jollie, M. July 31, 2025. Evolution and Paleontology. Encyclopedia Britannica. Thain, M. and M. Hickman. 2004. Dictionary of Biology. London, UK: Penguin Books, 353. Wells, J. and W. Dembski. 2008. The Design of Life. Seattle, WA: Dallas Foundation for Thought and Ethics, 125. Tomkins, J. and J. Bergman. 2013. Incomplete Lineage Sorting and Other ‘Rogue’ Data Fell the Tree of Life. Journal of Creation. 27 (3): 84–92. Doolittle, W. 1999. Phylogenetic Classification and the Universal Tree. Science. 284 (5423): 2124–2129.

• Dr. Sherwin is a science news writer at the Institute for Creation Research. He earned an M.A. in invertebrate zoology from the University of Northern Colorado and received an honorary doctorate of science from Pensacola Christian College.

Slowing Plates Support High Flood Boundary BY TIM CLAREY, PH.D. | MONDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2025

https://www.icr.org/article/slowing-plates-support-high-flood-boundary/

Flood geologists have predicted that plate motion slowed at the end of the Flood year, and now conventional scientists are finding it to be true. A recent study by Colleen Dalton and her colleagues from Brown University in Providence, RI, found that ocean crust production slowed by 35% from 15–6 million years ago, or late in the Tertiary.1 Although we dispute these great ages, the data still indicate a slowdown in plate movement occurred exactly when predicted, coinciding with the end of the Flood.2 And this slowdown was global, with 15 of 18 ocean ridges slowing at this same time.1

The best mechanism for the Flood is catastrophic plate tectonics, proposed by Dr. John Baumgardner and others in 1994.2 Specifically, he suggested that runaway subduction was the driving force for the rapid plate motion before its slowdown. And in an earlier study, Dalton and her team concluded that slab pull was “responsible for 60-70% of the force on subducted slabs.”3 As the slabs of the seafloor sank into the mantle, new seafloor was created at the adjacent ocean ridges.

Baumgardner points out that the cold pre-Flood seafloor was completely and rapidly consumed during the yearlong event and was rapidly replaced with today’s hotter, young igneous ocean seafloor. He explains,

In regard to the fate of the pre-Flood seafloor, there is strong observational support in global seismic tomography models for cold, dense material near the base of the lower mantle in a belt surrounding the present Pacific Ocean.4

He suggests that during the Flood cold plates were rapidly pulled down into the mantle, causing a thermal frictional envelope to develop around them by reducing viscosity (fluid-like thickness) in the mantle and “resulting in a sinking rate . . . higher than would occur otherwise.”4 Baumgardner found that once the older, colder, originally created oceanic crust and lithosphere began to subduct, it would speed up and drop into the less-dense hot mantle like a fishing weight in water. He referred to this as runaway subduction.4 He suggested that the rates of movement were meters per second, not centimeters per year as conventional scientists like to suggest.

It was the higher density of the heavy, cold, original ocean seafloor that allowed the runaway subduction process to begin and continue. The high density material served essentially as the fuel. Baumgardner described it as “gravitational energy driving the motion” of the plates.5 The runaway process continued until the original, created oceanic lithosphere was totally consumed. In other words, the Flood continued until the newer, more buoyant seafloor could no longer subduct because it was too buoyant. This, brought plate motion and the production of new seafloor at ocean ridges to a virtual standstill. And without new seafloor pushing the water upward, the flooding of the continents ceased, ending the Flood. Because of this, today’s plate motions shift only a few centimeters per year.

And this is exactly what Dalton and her team found. They found global evidence that the plates did, in fact, slow their motion all at the same time. Furthermore, they found that this slowdown happened abruptly, writing, “Here, we document spreading-rate reductions that are nearly global and relatively fast, in many cases >20% over 5 Myr [million years] or less.”3

Obviously, we disagree with the deep-time paradigm used in these studies. But ICR’s current model of a progressive Flood is strongly supported by this new evidence. As previously mentioned, Dalton’s team found that seafloor production slowed significantly in the late Tertiary, and we had previously suggested that the Flood didn’t end in the geologic record until late in the Tertiary (or Tejas Megasequence), just before the Ice Age.6

Additionally, this new discovery supports our interpretation of a high Cenozoic end of the Flood, which we call the N-Q (Neogene-Quaternary), because it was at this level in the rock record when new ocean seafloor nearly ceased forming across the globe. Without the formation of new seafloor, the flooding of the land would have ceased, ending the Flood.6 Simply put, when subduction slowed globally, the production of new seafloor at the ridges also slowed. It’s no surprise this occurred abruptly and globally since they are linked, cause and effect.3 And this is exactly what our model suggested.6

The upper subdivisions of the geologic column with the N-Q and the K-Pg boundaries identified Image credit: Susan Windsor ICR’s Flood model suggests that the floodwaters peaked near the end of the Cretaceous (top of the Zuni Megasequence) and began to recede during the Tertiary (or Tejas Megasequence). The cooling of newly created seafloor later in the Flood year caused the ocean floor to sink and the floodwaters to be drawn back into the ocean basins. Catastrophic plate motion continued throughout the Tertiary, until all of the original seafloor was completely consumed, causing the plates to abruptly slow to today’s rates. These two recent studies appear to document the very moment when the plates slowed.1,3

Dalton and her team of researchers unknowingly found evidence to support the catastrophic plate tectonics model.1,3 Sometimes data simply speak for itself. Scientific evidence continues to stack up in support of biblical truth. The rocks don’t lie!

References

Dalton, C. A. et al. 2025. Consequences of a Global Slowdown in Seafloor Spreading for Sea Level and Mantle Heat Loss. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems. 26 (2). Austin, S. A. et al. 1994. Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: A Global Flood Model of Earth History. Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism. 3, article 56: 609–622. Dalton, C. A., D. S. Wilson, and T. D. Herbert. 2022. Evidence for a Global Slowdown in Seafloor Spreading since 15 Ma. Geophysical Research Letters. 49 (6). Baumgardner, J. 1994. Runaway Subduction as the Driving Mechanism for the Genesis Flood. Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism. 3, article 14: 63–75. Baumgardner, J. 2018. Numerical Modeling of the Large-Scale Erosion, Sediment Transport, and Deposition Processes of the Genesis Flood. Answers Research Journal 11: 149–170. Clarey, T. 2020. Carved in Stone: Geological Evidence of the Worldwide Flood. Dallas, TX: The Institute for Creation Research. *Dr. Clarey is the director of research at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his doctorate in geology from Western Michigan University.

1 Corinthians 3&4 Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort; Who comforeth us in our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.

Psalm 90:16&17
Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. 17 Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!