OLDEST AMBER ARTHROPODS found, according to articles in BBC News and Fossil Science 28 August
2012 and PNAS online, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1208464109. An international team of
scientists has discovered two species of mites preserved in amber found in the
Dolomite Alps in northern Italy. Amber is fossilised tree resin, and small
creatures can be trapped within it while it is still liquid. Such creatures are
preserved when the amber goes hard and is buried. The Dolomite amber is dated as
230 million years old, making the mites the oldest arthropods preserved in
amber. According to David Grimaldi of the American Museum of Natural History,
New York, who studied the mites: “Amber is an extremely valuable tool for
palaeontologists because it preserves specimens with microscopic fidelity,
allowing uniquely accurate estimates of the amount of evolutionary change over
millions of years”. The mites are the oldest fossils of a highly specialised
group called Eriophyoidea, or gall mites, but they are “surprisingly similar to
ones seen today”. Grimaldi commented: “You would think that by going back to the
Triassic you'd find a transitional form of gall mite, but no. Even 230 million
years ago, all of the distinguishing features of this family were there - a
long, segmented body; only two pairs of legs instead of the usual four found in
mites; unique feather claws, and mouthparts”.
Links: BBC, Fossil
Science
ED. COM. Now come on folks.
If the oldest gall mites have all the distinguishing features that mites have
today then an accurate estimate of the amount of evolutionary change is zero.
Gall mites have not changed from whenever these individuals were caught in their
amber tomb until the present. These entrapped mites provide no evidence mites
have ever been any other kind of creature, nor have they been evolving into
anything else. The evidence from fossil and living mites is totally consistent
with mites having been created fully formed and as a separate kind which have
multiplied after their kind ever since, just as Genesis 1 says. (Ref.
invertebrates, fossils,
preservation) Creation Research.
