Fossil fern chromosomes found according to reports in ScienceDaily and Science doi: 10.1126/science.1249884 21 March 2014. Scientists at Lund University and the Swedish Museum of Natural History have studied an “exquisitely preserved, calcified stem of a royal fern” from southern Sweden and found it contained preserved intracellular components including “cytoplasm, cytosol granules, nuclei, and even chromosomes in various stages of cell division”. The researchers suggest these microscopic structures were preserved because the fossil was buried rapidly in a volcanic eruption. The fossil is dated at 180 million years old, putting it in the Early Jurassic period of the evolutionary timetable.
Royal ferns still grow in Sweden, both in the wild and as garden plants. Vivi Vajda of Lund University commented, “Royal Ferns look essentially the same now as they did during the Jurassic Period, and are therefore an excellent example of what we call a living fossil”. The chromosomes were well enough preserved to enable the researchers to compare them with chromosomes of living royal ferns and estimate the genome size. They concluded “the genome size of these ‘living fossils’ has remained unchanged over at least 180 million years—a paramount example of evolutionary stasis”.
Editorial Comment: Did you catch the evolutionists Non-speak? The term “evolutionary stasis” is meaningless. Stasis means to stay still, or stay the same, but evolution is a theory about how living things turned into different things. These fossils show that ferns have not changed since the fossils were buried, and therefore there has been no evolution, no matter how old the fossils are claimed to be. Therefore, Vajda is correct – royal ferns are a classic example of a living fossil i.e. an organism whose fossils and living specimens are the same. However, living fossils have nothing to do with evolution. Instead, living fossils are good examples of living things multiplying after their kind, just as Genesis tells us.
Then for a Double Wow? Researchers admitting these fossils, with their fine microscopic details, must have been buried quickly and deeply. Sounds like what we have been saying for years.
Evidence News, vol. 14, No. 6
16 April 2014
Creation Research Australia