New fossil fishes found, according to a report in BBC News, 29 March 2005 and 3 May 2005. An amateur fossil hunter named Patrick Gavin of Dunbartonshire, Scotland has found a fossil fish that experts claim is “totally new to science”. Palaeontologists at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow claim that the fossil’s small scales, pointed teeth and the position of its fins make it different from any known species. The fossil is believed to have lived 330 million years ago and is very well preserved with teeth, scales visible and stomach contents preserved.
Meanwhile in South Africa, British and South African scientists have found fossil fish in rocks believed to be 450 million years old – 50 million years older than any other fossil fish in Africa. “These new fish are among the most exciting ever,” said Richard Aldridge of the University of Leicester. People may wonder how we know these fossils are fishes, when we have no bones with which to identify them. The answer is that the exceptional preservation displayed in these rocks enables us to recognise the eyes, scales and even the liver of the animals.” The fossils don’t have teeth and Aldridge believes they are a missing link in the early evolution of fish.
Editorial Comment: If these fish exist only as fossils with no apparent living forms, it only proves they once lived but have now died out. It does not prove they evolved from anything else, or into anything else.
Genesis tells us that God made a good world with one sea teeming with living creatures which were made to reproduce after their kinds (Genesis 1:20-21). Since the rebellion of man via Adam’s sin, the Biblical account portrays a world which has degenerated, particularly after Noah’s flood with the degeneration of the weather, so it is not surprising if many living creatures have died out.
These fossils are also no help to uniformitarian long age geology, since the fact that both these fossils are well preserved indicates they were buried rapidly and deeply so that decay processes could not destroy their structure. This is the opposite of the usual textbook and museum display story about how fossil fishes form, which still commonly describes dead fish falling to the bottom of the sea and being slowly covered by sediment. In fact, dead fish usually float and are rapidly broken down by scavengers and bacteria long before they can get buried by sediment. (Ref. extinction, uniformitarianism, fossilisation)