Great dying produced mobile creatures, according to an article in ABC (Australia) News in Science and Science vol 314, p1289, 24 Nov 2006.
The “Great Dying’ is a term commonly used for a mass extinction believed to have occurred at the end of the Permian age, about 250 million years ago, that wiped out approximately 95% of the Earth’s marine species and 70% of its land species.
Scientists at James Cook University, Queensland, Australia and the Field Museum, Chicago have carried out a statistical analysis of the number and type of organisms over the past 540 million years using information from the Paleobiology Database. They analysed 1176 fossil assemblages of marine life from Cambrian to recent and came to the conclusion that immobile creatures such as crinoids and stationary shellfish that were mainly filter feeders were largely wiped out and were replaced by mobile creatures, such as crabs and snails.
According to Peter Wagner of the Field Museum, the results “show that the end-Permian mass extinction permanently altered not just taxonomic diversity but also the prevailing marine ecosystem structure.” As such, scientists claim it is a “warning on how we treat the ecosystem now”. Wagner commented: “Studies by modern marine ecologists suggest that humans are reducing certain marine ecosystems to something reminiscent of 550 million years ago, prior to the explosion of animal diversity.”
Editorial Comment: We don’t hear any evolutionists claiming to be excited about all the new species that will evolve after the current reduction of modern ecosystems. The fact is, losing 95% of marine species is the opposite of evolution. Extinction means that whole species have died out permanently. This may leave unoccupied spaces in the environment, but that cannot produce new living things.
Furthermore, finding different fossils in Permian and Triassic rocks is no proof that one evolved into the other. These rocks were given different names because geologists saw that they had different fossils in them, not because anyone observed Permian fossils evolving into any other type of fossils.
Evidence News 24 April 2007
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