The claim that living fossils negate the theory of evolution is false for three reasons: the laws of evolution, genetic variation, and the fossil record support the theory of evolution.
Living fossils are organisms that look similar to ancient creatures and have no living relatives today. These living fossils are often used by creationists as evidence that the theory of evolution is wrong. For example, they claim that because ginkgo trees or cockroaches look the same in fossils as they do today, evolution hasn’t happened. But are living fossils really proof that the theory of evolution is wrong? The bottom line is that it’s completely wrong. Let’s take a look at why.
There are three main fallacies in the argument that living fossils are proof that evolution is wrong. The first is that evolution is not a law that requires change to occur. People who make this mistake usually think of evolution as a process that starts with amoebas, which are single-celled organisms, and then moves on to fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and finally humans. This leads them to ask the wrong question, “When does a monkey become a human? But this is a big misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. According to evolutionary theory, all current species are the result of over 3 billion years of evolution from a common ancestor of life on Earth, meaning that all species have evolved equally over the same amount of time. E. coli, lizards, and cats all evolved over the same amount of time. So why didn’t they become humans? This is because the theory of evolution doesn’t say that all species will change and eventually become humans. There is no law in evolutionary theory that says species must change toward a specific goal. However, since they started out as the simplest forms of life, any subsequent changes are likely to be to larger, more complex forms, often evolving in ways that favor their survival based on environmental factors such as terrain, climate, and natural enemies. Importantly, species adapt to their environment and change into forms that favor their survival. Conversely, if a change is not favorable or unfavorable to their survival, they may not change at all. Thus, species that live in places where there is little environmental change, such as the deep ocean, or where their current form is highly favorable for survival, may change little over time. For example, species such as the deep-sea silencers or cockroaches, whose current form is highly favorable for survival. The existence of living fossils can be fully explained by evolutionary theory.
The second reason is that we cannot assume that living fossils are identical to ancient species. Those who deny evolution believe that living fossils undermine the theory of evolution and search hard for them. In fact, creationist Harun Yahya’s Atlas of Creation mentions living fossils in a whopping 1,397 entries. They claim that staying the same over the years is proof that living things are immutable and don’t evolve. However, there isn’t a single living fossil that we can say for sure hasn’t evolved. This is because fossils can only show the appearance of ancient organisms. They don’t tell us anything about the organism’s genes, biochemical systems, immune response, etc. So even if a living fossil looks similar to an ancient species, we can’t be sure that it hasn’t changed beyond what we can see. In fact, it’s even harder to avoid changes at the genetic level. It’s widely known that errors in the DNA replication process can lead to changes in DNA after just one generation. Furthermore, organisms that are called living fossils are often forcibly grouped into the same species just because they look similar. In reality, they have evolved into many different forms. For example, cockroaches have evolved into many different sizes and shapes, and there are now more than 4,000 species, which is quite different from the giant cockroach species of ancient times. They’ve also become significantly smaller in size and more complex in appearance.
Finally, most of the organisms found in fossils don’t exist today. In other words, most of the ancient species that remain as fossils are not alive today, except for a very few living fossils. This is a huge problem for creationists. It’s also why they desperately search for living fossils to deny the theory of evolution, and why it’s so hard to find them. Creationists claim that all living species were created and have remained unchanged ever since. They also believe that fossils were formed all at once in a great flood about 4,000 years ago. This raises a question. How many species became extinct during the Flood? According to their argument, none went extinct because Noah saved them all from extinction by putting them on the ark in pairs. But how do they account for fossilized creatures that are no longer alive? The more creationists argue that living fossils are proof against evolution, the more they emphasize species that exist only as fossils, undermining their own logic. Evolution is currently the only theory that can explain the small number of living fossils and the vast majority of fossilized species.
The three arguments above show that living fossils are not evidence against evolution, but rather evidence in favor of evolution. They also show that the evolutionary position on living fossils is more plausible than the creationist position. However, these arguments alone do not make evolution “right” or “wrong”. Neither theory is universally observable or experimentally verifiable. In fact, unless a time machine is built, we will never know exactly how the existence of living fossils came about. However, there’s no denying that evolution is the most valid and scientific theory at the moment. Although evolutionary theory currently relies on uncertain factors such as chance and natural selection, in time it will be able to clearly explain the evolutionary phenomena of all living things, including living fossils.
