Climate change, 58 million years, but no evolution

Rock containing fossil from the laurel-plant family found in northern Colombia (Florida Museum of Natural History photo)

Researchers say a treasure trove of fossils found in a coal mine in Colombia indicates the tropical climate that existed there 58 million years ago was considerably warmer and wetter than today's conditions, but the plants growing then have not changed, "down to the genus level."

That, according to the Institute for Creation Research, has created a dilemma for evolutionists, along with the observation that the animal life also appears to have undergone almost no change at all.

"None of these observations come as a shock [to] those who subscribe to the concept that plants and animals were specially created," wrote ICR science writer Brian Thomas in a commentary.

"However, the claim that these fossils are 58 million years old may be difficult to support. Given all that time, why has no evolutionary change occurred in the plants or animals described?"

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According to a report from the University of Florida, a team of researchers that included a paleontologist from the university found the "rich cache of plant fossils" in Colombia. As a result, they were able to "provide the first reliable evidence of how Neotropical rainforests looked 58 million years ago."

The school announced that researchers from the Smithsonian Institution and other educational institutions "found that many of the dominant plant families existing in today's Neotropical rainforests – including legumes, palms, avocado and banana – have maintained their ecological dominance despite major changes in South America's climate and geological structure."

The University of Florida said the study reported in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looked at 2,000 megafossil specimens, some nearly 10 feet long, from the Cerrejon Formation in northern Colombia.

Fabiany Herrera, a graduate student at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the University of Florida campus, said the fossils, found in 2003 but examined now, show Neotropical rainforests were warmer and wetter in the late Paleocene than today but were composed of the same plant families that now thrive in rainforests.

"We have the fossils to prove this," Herrera said in a statement prepared by the university. "It is also intriguing that while the Cerrejon rainforest shows many of the characteristics of modern equivalents, plant diversity is lower."

Wrote Thomas, "The fossils reveal that ancient rainforests 'were composed of the same plant families that now thrive in rainforests.' Even more remarkable, supposedly ancient fossil leaves – some of them very well preserved – were identifiable 'down to the genus level.'

"In addition to the plants, the fossilized animals seemed quite similar to their modern counterparts. For example, it was from this same formation that researchers had earlier uncovered fossil remains of a huge snake that they called 'Titanoboa.' In a University of Florida press release, one researcher stated, 'like Titanoboa, which is clearly related to living boas and anacondas, the ancient forest of northern Colombia had similar families of plants as we see today in that ecosystem,'" he continued.

Thomas suggested one common argument in defense of the theory of evolution in the face "of a lack of fossil evidence" is that some creatures simply failed to evolve because their environment stayed the same. The presumption is that without environmental changes, there's no pressure to drive evolution.

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In the Cerrejon Formation, however, he noted, the scholars reported "legumes, palms, avocado and banana – have maintained their ecological dominance despite major changes in South America's climate and geological structure.'"

"So," Thomas wrote, "in this instance, there has been enough time for evolution to have occurred, and there were enough 'major changes' in the area to provide selection pressure. This would seem an ideal test case for large-scale evolution. But the existence of the same flora and fauna then as today shows that evolution did not occur at all.

"The remarkable similarities are also consistent with a much younger date for the fossils. Rather than an inexplicable example of creatures that remained evolutionarily dormant for 'millions of years,' the best fit for the evidence is their recent creation as distinct plant and animal kinds."

University officials were adamant about their conclusions, citing the additional evidence from the fossil for "Titanoboa."

"These new plant fossils show us that the forest during the time of Titanoboa, 58 million years ago, was similar in many ways to that of today," according to Florida Museum vertebrate paleontologist Jonathan Bloch.

He had described the snake fossil but was not part of the rainforest study.

"Like Titanoboa, which is clearly related to living boas and anacondas, the ancient forest of northern Colombia had similar families of plants as we see today in that ecosystem. The foundations of the Neotropical rainforests were there 58 million years ago," he said.

ICR spokesman Lawrence Ford told WND that there is clear evidence of changes in the environment, and fossils would be expected to reflect those changes. Instead, "What has been discovered in the fossil record is very similar to what we see today."

"There's the conundrum for evolutionists," he said, because this was the "perfect lab for evolutionary change."

"Their assumptions fail at this point," he said.