“Paleontologists used to think that one of the most common mosasaurs—Platecarpus—swam like eels, undulating their bodies back and forth. But another look at a complete fossil…made them think otherwise. Platecarpus actually swam like a shark, propelling itself forward using only its powerful tail, giving it an advantage over eel-like fish that have to move most of their bodies to get around. That means shark-like swimming evolved in the sea monsters 20 million years sooner than believed.” The title of this ScienceNow article is “Rapid Evolution for Ancient Sea Monsters.” Evolution MUST be more rapid than previously thought because the window of time for evolution to work its “magic” continues to shrink with virtually every knew discovery. This new evidence pushes the modern shark method of swimming further back in the evolutionary timeline. Modern morphology and modern behaviors keep appearing closer to the beginning. Maybe one day they will get all the way back to the creation week! This research further proves just how hard it is to determine behavior from bones. This should also encourage us to take a grain of salt with each new serving of bold assertions by paleontologists and anthropologists. For example, when say they are certain that australopithecines like “Lucy” walked upright (even though no feet were ever found). This is yet another in an endless series of evolutionary assumptions proven wrong by actual scientific evidence. More will surely follow.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/08/scienceshot-rapid-evolution-for-.html?ref=hp

The general public has heard repeatedly that human and chimpanzee DNA is 98-99% similar. It is implied that the charts of human DNA were held up next to chimp DNA and they were virtually identical. But ICR contributor Dr. Jeffrey Tompkins notes that, “The supposed fact that human DNA is 98 to 99 percent similar to chimpanzee DNA is actually misleading.”  First of all, “The human genome was used as a guide or framework to anchor and orient the chimp sequence. Thus, the evolutionary assumption of a supposed ape to human transition was used to assemble the otherwise random chimp genome.” Dr. Tompkins further explains, “One of the main problems with a comparative evolutionary analysis between human and chimp DNA is that some of the most critical DNA sequence is often omitted from the scope of the analysis.” Non-coding  parts of the human genome are often referred to as “junk DNA.” The purpose of such a label is to imply that this area of the human genome is unimportant. But, Dr. Tompkins clarifies, “The genetic information that is functional and regulatory is stored in “non-coding regions,” which are essential for the proper functioning of all cells.” And not only are these areas critically important, but they are a big part of what makes humans human. “The largest differences [between chimp and human DNA] are observed in regard to brain function, dexterity, speech, and other traits with strong cognitive components….a number of recent studies are also confirming that close to 93 percent of the genome is transcriptionally active (functional).⁶ Not so long ago, scientists thought that only 3 to 5 percent of the genome that contained the protein coding regions was functional; the rest was considered “junk DNA.” In fact, many scientists are back-pedaling in response to this new data. “Evolutionists are now reversing themselves and claiming that the non-coding DNA is where important features related to human evolution are located .”

A new research study (http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v4/n1/blastin) by Dr. Tompkins published in Answers Research Journal this month did a comprehensive comparison of human and chimp DNA without any pre-sorting and using all of the available genome sequence. Here are the results of the study: “Average sequence identity between human and chimp for both phases of the study varied between 86 and 89 percent.” So, the oft-repeated mantra of 98-99% similarity is wrong. Previous estimates were pre-screened and sorted for similarity which generated an artificially-high similarity. Much of the unmatched human genome was discarded as “junk DNA” but geneticists are now finding that these areas of the human genome (which have no similarity to the chimp genome) are in critical areas which make humans humans. Without agenda-driven cherry-picking, a broad-based straight-up comparison results in genetic differences 10 times what was previously reported by evolutionists to the public.
http://www.icr.org/article/human-chimp-similarities-common-ancestry/

Bible critics eagerly dismiss the flood account in Genesis by claiming the Hebrew writers merely copied the much older account by the Sumerians called the Epic of Gilgamesh. It is believed that this tablet was written around 2000 B.C. This is much older than 1450 B.C. when Moses would have written Genesis. But they fail to realize that while Moses wrote down the flood account around 1450 B.C. (by divine inspiration), the actual flood occurred much earlier than even the Gilgamesh tablet (if its dating is accurate). It is logical to suggest that the Sumerians may have adapted their story from the oral tradition of the Pre-Mosaic Israelites and written their own version of the events. This in no way discredits the Genesis record, even if the Gilgamesh Epic is an older writing. The events far predate even the Sumerian record. Nozomi Osanai said (linked below) that if the Genesis account is an adaptation of the Gilgamesh Epic, “The author of the Genesis account would have needed to revise the Epic as follows: change the concept of god from polytheism to absolute monotheism and add the strong, consistent moral motivation for the Flood by establishing God as righteous and gracious; write clear descriptions that show the Flood as universal in order to make the whole account consistent…improve the source of the Flood from only rain to rain and underground water sufficient to cover the whole world; specify the duration of the Flood from only six days and nights and unspecified days to more than one year which is adequate for a universal Flood; redesign the structure of the Ark from the unstable cube to the ideal safe design for floating…Therefore, despite the many similarities between the two accounts, it would have been inconceivable to rewrite the Epic to the Genesis account, the more reliable one, unless the author was not only ethical, creative and logical, but also had enough knowledge about zoology, biology, physics, naval architectural skill, botany and ancient ethnic histories.” The Sumerian tablets also include the lifespans of kings which average over 30,000 years! Makes Methuselah’s 969 years seem like a mere weekend and far more believable. The Gilgamesh Epic is riddled with internal inconsistencies which show the Genesis record to have much greater accuracy and integrity. Bible critics need to find a more credible source to attack the Genesis record.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/csgeg/conclusion

Geologists all agree that erosion, earthquakes, etc. could NOT have formed Stonehenge. To even suggest it would garner belly-laughs. Obviously, this mysterious structure represents the intentional effort and intelligence of the people who built it. Their knowledge of astrological movements is astounding. But we are expected to believe that random chemical reactions formed self-replicating, self-regulating, self-repairing nanotechnology like a simple cell? The living, moving micromachinery makes man’s greatest feats of engineering look like a child’s crayon-scribbling. Information and design demand a Creator able to produce such amazing creations. If a pile of rocks is no accident, then neither can a perfectly-functioning, ordered universe be accidental.

In 1993, there was an outbreak of a new type of hemorrhagic fever near the Four-Corners region of the United States. It was identified as Hantavirus. It was carried by mice and spread through their droppings and nests. Nobody except a very few virologists had ever heard of it before and no one had heard of it until its discovery in Korea in 1978. It was a long time before anyone knew that reptiles can carry diseases such as salmonella. The bacteria were not even known to exist until their discovery in the late 1800’s. But there is another scientific source which WAS aware of both of these as long as 3,500 years ago. Moses was giving the law to the children of Israel and he stated, “These also shall be unclean to you among the creeping things that creep on the earth: the mole, the mouse, and the large lizard after its kind; the gecko, the monitor lizard, the sand reptile, the sand lizard, and the chameleon. These are unclean to you among all that creep” (Leviticus 11:29-31).  Moses went on to declare that if a person touched one of these animals they would be unclean. They would be unable to enter the tabernacle and worship until they had cleansed themselves. Please notice that not only is the animal itself unclean according to the Law of Moses, but so is any surface the animal touched. This might seem silly and extreme if not for our present knowledge of contamination. We wouldn’t put food on a surface where raw poultry had been until we cleaned it. We know this now, but no one knew it back then. It took God to reveal this wisdom to mankind. The scientific foreknowledge and accuracy of the Bible is one of the most convincing proofs of its divine inspiration.

“Cetomimidae, a type of whalefish, had been known since the 19th century, but only females had been found. Seemingly related species called Mirapinnidae, or tapetails, and Megalomycteridae, or bignose fish, were identified in the 1950s and 1960s. Tapetails were only found as juveniles and bignoses only as males. The larvae would go to shallower depths looking for food. They would gorge themselves and then travel back down to lower depths as they continue to develop. The jaw of the males would fuse as their nose grew large to detect females. The females instead grow larger mouths to catch more prey where food is scarcer. G. David Johnson, an ichthyologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History said, “Although their skeletons indicated the three were related, there were so many differences no one could believe they were the same fish at different sexes or stages in life.” At least, no one wedded to Darwinist evolution and all of its assumptions. Johnson admitted, “It tells you how little we know about the deep sea.” So, what biologists previously “knew” were three separate species are now known to be the same species of different sexes at different stages.  This testifies not only to the complexity of life God designed into all creatures from creation, but also how interpretations can vary according to preconceived ideas.  Additionally, it shows how the modern classification of a species is often unnecessarily narrow.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,482164,00.html

A recent study published in the science journal Nature documented the analysis of some teeth found in England and Italy. “In tests conducted at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit in England, the baby teeth from Italy were dated at 43,000 to 45,000 years old. Other analysis showed the teeth to be those of a modern human, not a Neanderthal, as previously thought when the fossil was unearthed in 1964.” Similar results and dates were found for the Italian teeth as well making them the “oldest known modern human fossils from northwestern Europe”. These displace the previous record-holder, a Romanian fossil declared to be “reliably dated”  at 37-42,000 years old although it was found without any stone tools or artifacts to assist in the dating. Dr. Thomas Higham, the Oxford paper’s author, admitted: “the earlier dates for these fossils meant that early humans must have coexisted with Neanderthals in this part of the world, something which a number of researchers have doubted.” The most revealing part of the article was this frank confession: “Determining the age for any samples more than 40,000 years old was no sure thing. At that age, levels of remaining radiocarbon are low, and contamination can be a serious problem.” The Oxford group arrived at their dates by “obtain[ing] radiocarbon dates of animal bones found close to the jawbone in Kents Cavern and us[ing] a statistical modeling method to calculate the age of the human fossil.”

So what have we learned from this handful of teeth?

1. Neanderthals and modern humans coexisted despite long-held evolutionary assumptions to the contrary. So, once again, what “all real scientists KNOW” (i.e. that Neanderthals evolved into humans) has been disproven by actual evidence, much to the chagrin of evolutionists. Neanderthals were not “missing links” of human evolution, but rather were contemporaries of modern humans. Numerous other findings in recent years has proven that Neanderthals were truly modern humans with distinguishing features falling well within range of modern genetic variation—NOT a separate species of subhuman (as evolutionists have insisted for decades).

 2. Dating methods are riddled with problems and contradictions. One fossil is “reliably dated” even without any accompanying tools or artifacts. Then, scientists admit weaknesses in radiocarbon dating methods because so little radiocarbon is left after “tens of thousands” of years. Therefore, accompanying evidence (like stone tools and artifacts) must be present to support these alleged dates. Circular reasoning, anyone? Then, scientists turned to “radiocarbon dates [which were just described in the article as “no sure thing”—RL] of animal bones found close to the jawbone…and used a statistical modeling method [i.e. a computer guess—RL] to calculate the age of the human fossil.” What a mess!

 3. Even if these findings are true and accurate (which is a mighty BIG “if”), all it proves is that modern humans keep appearing further and further back in the evolutionary timeline. The necessary time for the assumed evolution between apes and humans keeps shrinking. One day that window of evolutionary miracles will disappear and we will find that modern humans existed all the way back to the beginning in the garden of Eden. Just like the Bible has said all along. A great deal of information (and misinformation) from just a handful of teeth.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/science/fossil-teeth-put-humans-in-europe-earlier-than-thought.html?ref=todayspaper

Quasars are extremely bright objects in space. Astronomers believe that the intense light comes from a black hole at the center which produces tremendous energy as matter is superheated as it is pulled in. A massive quasar has been seen recently (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13964767). By measuring the red-shift, astronomers have estimated (using Big Bang assumptions) that this quasar is 12.9 billion light-years away. Counting backwards on the Big Bang/evolutionary clock, that would mean that this quasar and its black hole existed in this present view when the universe was “merely” 770 million years old. Answers in Genesis pointed out: “But this black hole has a mass two billion times that of the Sun. The big bang idea demands that time elapse for massive objects like that to form, and 770 million years just isn’t enough time.” BBC News writer Jonathan Amos said, “Scientists are struggling to explain how these objects could have evolved so big, so fast.” Even Chris Willott of the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre commented, “It is safe to say that the existence of this quasar will be giving some theorists sleepless nights.” Astronomers have been forced to consider “alternative explanations for light-travel-time.” Meaning that light may not have always travelled at the same speed it presently does. Time-dilation theories put forth by creationists explaining how distant starlight could coexist with a young earth have been laughed at by evolutionists. But now even Big-Bangers are turning to similar explanations as they scratch their heads over this (and other) surprising inconsistencies. Recent research has suggested that neutrinos may travel faster than the speed of light. This has yet to be proven, but if true it presents even more problems for the Big Bang theory (as if it didn’t have enough already).

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2011/07/09/news-to-note-07092011 (item #3)

A study published in Nature magazine measured strontium levels in the tooth enamel of australopithecines (a.k.a. “Lucy) to determine habitat range based on local diet. They found “The males never strayed far from home, and the females dispersed after puberty to neighboring groups. The pattern of female dispersal is not unexpected, since it is practiced by chimpanzees.” Joan B. Silk, an expert on primate social behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles, said, ‘It’s really nice to see there is biological continuity from chimpanzees to australopithecines.” That’s because they ARE chimpanzees!  Australopithecines are “often assumed to have had a chimplike social structure, with a male hierarchy, promiscuous mating by the females. The central puzzle of human social evolution, in Dr. Chapais’s view, is to explain how promiscuity was replaced by the pair bond. The australopithecines studied by Dr. Copeland’s team still had a somewhat chimplike social structure, Dr. Chapais said, because the pair bond did not evolve until the appearance of Homo erectus.” Homo erectus is a supposed sub-human ancestor whose anatomy falls well within the range of genetic variation of modern humans, just as Neanderthals and Homo floresiensis (“hobbits”) do. The study also determined “Another far-reaching consequence of the developing pair bond was that individuals could at last start to recognize their relatives, which chimpanzees mostly cannot do.” So here is yet another difference between chimps/australopithecines and modern humans. Summation: Australopithecines act more like chimps socially than humans or even (alleged) pre-humans. This is no surprise since Lucy and her Hominid kin exhibit every other commonality with chimps (such as locking wrists, curved metacarpals, shoulders, pelvis, ribcage, inner ear bones, etc.). The case for the vaunted “valgus knee” is far from conclusive. The researchers admit that the “flipping of the switch” from a promiscuous chimp-like social structure to pair bonding happened after the australopithecines. As much as can be determined about social behavior from fossils, their behavior was that of chimps. Hominins are apes, not humans. Their physiology, and now, even their social behavior bears evidence to this fact. Monkeys are monkeys, people are people. Just as God designed from the very beginning.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/science/02social.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2011/06/11/news-to-note-06112011

Some don’t see how sandy beaches could exist if the earth is not millions of years old. The belief is that grains of sand are made from lava and metamorphic rock which are deposited on beaches over millions of years of erosion. Answers in Genesis offered this bit of history as a rebuttal: “In 1963, volcanic eruptions on the seafloor adjacent to Iceland produced a new island, which was called Surtsey… within a few months, erosion by the ocean produced a coastline with beaches covered in sand. In fact, within a year or two the island had become vegetated and populated with insects and animals. It didn’t take thousands of years for either the beaches to form or the island to be populated.”  Someone using uniformitarian assumptions would conclude that the island must have existed for many thousands, if not millions, of years. But recorded human observation disproves this faulty theory. There was not any human observation of billions of years of slow, gradual erosion anywhere else on the earth either. There is only assumption and speculation. Recorded human history also tells of another, bigger event than what occured in Iceland—the Flood of Noah. The destructive power of nearly a year of massive water flow is beyond imagination. The tremendous power of flowing water was seen on a comparably tiny scale at the Glen Canyon Dam spillway in 1983 [see link below]. “The water flows [of the Flood] would have been similar to what was witnessed at the Glen Canyon Dam, so the rapid erosion of rocks would have produced huge volumes of sand, which dumped offshore and on the coastline to form the sandy beaches and the immediate sandy offshore areas.” The existence of sandy beaches fits perfectly with the information found in the Bible.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2010/07/09/feedback-does-sand-prove-long-ages

http://preachrr.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/there%e2%80%99s-power-in-the-flood/