Follow up on missing link mollusc: In Evidence News 10 October 2012 we reported a fossil mollusc that was claimed to show that worm-like creatures named aplacophorans, which don’t have shells, evolved from chiton-like creatures that do have shells. We made the comment: “Losing what you already have is a change from complex to simple, which is the opposite of evolution. Showing how chitons got shells in the first place is what the evolutionist really needs to do.” This item can be read here.
After we sent this out we were reminded that the fossil history of chitons themselves is no help to the evolutionary story. Modern day chitons have a single row of eight plates, surrounded by a ring of scales. In Nature vol 429, p288, 20 May 2004 scientists in USA reported the fossil of a chiton-like mollusc with 17 plates, arranged in three overlapping columns, with a single plate at the head and tail. The fossil was classified as belonging to a group known as Multiplacophora. Living chitons are classified as belonging to a group known as Polyplacophora. The researchers wrote in their report: “Multiplacophorans, like trilobites, were pruned from the metazoan tree before the radiation of the modern fauna during the Mesozoic.”
Editorial Comment: Being “pruned from the metazoan tree” is an evolutionist’s way of saying they died out and became extinct. Thus, the fossil record of chitons shows that creatures with many plates in a complex arrangement appear suddenly and fully formed in the fossil record, but they have died out, whilst chitons with fewer plates grouped in a simple arrangement, are the only known present day representatives of this group.
If the 17 plate chitons gave rise to the living chitons with eight plates it may be change, but such change is not evolution. Take off Darwin’s Glasses and start seeing the real world God made, and take note of the fact that the fossil record is not the history of life on earth, but a record of death and degeneration. (Ref. invertebrates, arthropods, extinction)
Evidence News 18 October 2012