Why crocodiles haven’t evolved, according to University of Bristol press release and ScienceDaily 7 January 2021, and Communications Biology, 7 January 2021 doi: 10.1038/s42003-020-01561-5.
Living crocodiles are very similar to fossil crocodiles found in Jurassic rocks dated at over 200 million years old. There are only 25 species living today, but in the past there were many more crocodilians species, some of which were different to living species. In order to work out why the surviving crocodiles are the same as Jurassic crocodiles, Max Stockdale and Michael Benton of University of Bristol “used a machine learning algorithm to estimate rates of evolution.”
Max Stockdale explained: “Evolutionary rate is the amount of change that has taken place over a given amount of time, which we can work out by comparing measurements from fossils and taking into account how old they are. For our study we measured body size, which is important because it interacts with how fast animals grow, how much food they need, how big their populations are and how likely they are to become extinct”.
According to the University press release “The findings show that the limited diversity of crocodiles and their apparent lack of evolution is a result of a slow evolutionary rate. It seems the crocodiles arrived at a body plan that was very efficient and versatile enough that they didn’t need to change it in order to survive”.
The researchers claim crocodile evolution is an example of “a pattern of evolution known as ‘punctuated equilibrium’. The rate of their evolution is generally slow, but occasionally they evolve more quickly because the environment has changed”.
The University press release is entitled “Research explains why crocodiles have changed so little since the age of the dinosaurs”.
Links: ScienceDaily, University of Bristol
Editorial Comment: Did you get that? Crocodiles’ “apparent lack of evolution is a result of a slow evolutionary rate”. Does this research explain anything? Such scientific ‘wisdom’ is a classic example of how the theory of evolution is useless at explaining what has happened in the real world.
The theory of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ does not explain how Jurassic crocodiles came into being or how the extinct varieties changed their body form. A change in the environment will not create any new genetic information, even though environmental change will cause some things to die out because they don’t already have characteristics needed to survive in the new environment.
Let’s consider the actual observations. There used to be a greater variety of crocodilians, but some have died out, and the ones that remain today look like fossils found in Jurassic rocks. The Biblical book of Genesis provides a far better explanation for these findings. In the beginning the world was very good and there were many created fully formed crocodilians. Since then the world has degenerated due to human sin and God’s judgement, and some crocodilians died out. The ones that survived continued to reproduce after their kind, and that is why they still look like the oldest dated fossil crocodilians.
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