So, Dr. Carl Werner recently went on Rebekah Davis’ channel to make his usual claims about ‘living fossils’.
TL;DR
That argument has never impressed me. It fails, often on multiple grounds.
STRAW MAN
Even if we accept the premise that some organisms have remained (relatively) unchanged for a (relatively) long period of time… so what? Why would this matter to whether evolutionary science is valid or not. The argument relies on a false premise that ‘according to evolutionary biologists, all organisms must change at an unspecified pace within an unspecified time frame’. No scientists holds this position. Not even Charles Darwin, the man who coined the term ‘living fossil’, argued for this position. He coined this in reference to Lingula a genus that seemingly dates back through the Phanerozoic, over 500 million years ago. Although, someone has made the argument that some of the older Lingula specimens do show significant differences, and that the Lingula in a strict sense only originated in the Late Cretaceous (100 million years ago) at the earliest.
CHERRY PICKING
Furthermore, what about most organisms. Referencing the title from the video thumbnail, are all (or even most) modern animals found in all fossil layers? Humans, cats, dogs, horses, bears, whales, bats, birds, bees, snakes, crocodiles, flowers, just to name a few? No, they are not. If you think that all modern organisms (or the undefined Baraminological “kinds”) we see today have been around since creation, then we would expect to see most living animals to be present in all rock layers that were formed after creation. Pointing to a few organisms that appears to have remained unchanged to conclude that life did not evolve is like arguing that cars can not move based on a few cars that have been parked for years.
IGNORANCE
What tends to irritate me is that many of the cited examples of ‘living fossils’ involve comparing a living organism and a fossil and then just claim that they are the same, while completely overlooking/ignoring significant differences. Disturbingly often, the sole basis of such claims is that they “look the same” at a mere glance to a laymen who doesn’t know better, without any rigorous anatomical examination. To use a medical analogy, which Dr. Werner should be familiar with since is formally trained in medicine, these instances are like confusing the common cold and the flu. But Werner often commits this very fallacy to make his argument. What is frustrating is that Werner is very much aware that people have pointed out that he is not comparing apples to apples (see quote directly below).
Dogs are the same species
[16:19] WERNER: I might be wrong on this, but I’ve never encountered a modern species in any of these layers. In other words, they have maybe some animal [clears throat] down here that kind of looks like a starfish, [snorts] but it’s it’s a different genus and species. So, the evolutionists would say, “No, there’s no modern unless if someone could correct me on this, I’d appreciate it.” But they say, "No, there’s no modern animals down here. No modern species at the very top. Yeah. You the last million years or so. Yeah. You get some in the Holocene. That’s where the modern ones show up.
REBEKAH: They’ll call them living fossils if they’re farther down, you know, like a horseshoe crab or something. They’ll say that’s a living fossil.
WERNER: Yeah. But they would also pin you down saying that that is not the same animal because it’s in a different genus and different species. And they say, you know, it kind of looks like the horseshoe crab, but it’s not the modern horseshoe crab because look at the genus and species is different. I’m playing the devil’s advocate here.
REBEKAH: Oh, really? They’ll even say that for the horseshoe crab.
WERNER: For every animal that looks similar down all the way down the bottom. For every animal in my book ‘Living Fossils’ they’d say, “No, those are different animals. Those are not modern animals. They’re not modern species.” And so that’s how an evolutionist uh thinks.
Just avoid any accusations, I got these quotes by copy pasting from the auto-generated video transcript, so I did not add the [snorts] and [clears throat] notations. Still funny though. Anyway, but yes. If you want to claim that they are modern animals, then the fact whether they are the same species or genus is very relevant. And in many cases, the supposed living fossil is not even in the same family or order or class as the purported fossil counterpart (more on that later).
But Werner argues that this doesn’t matter. Why? At [24:29] he points to domesticated dogs, and makes the argument that, if dog skulls can vary so greatly such that to him they don’t look like they belong in the same species or genus, that makes him think that in his hypothetical scenario paleontologists would likely put dog breeds in different genera if dogs were only known from fossils. Werner thinks that happens when scientists classify a modern organism and a fossil specimen as a different species, if (in Werner’s eyes) they could very easily just be different “breeds” of the same species.
However, (1st) the extreme variation in sizes and proportions of dog skulls do not apply to wild species. The variation in dog skulls is entirely artificial, the result of human domestication. Furthermore, paleontologists are competent enough to recognize that domesticated dog skulls have the same basic structure, and that the variations morphometrically overlap with each other and even with those of wolves. They would also recognize that the extreme disproportional shapes of jaws and skull that leads to dental malocclusion are signs of domestication as well. This argument is just Werner trying to project his ignorance onto paleontologists. If he is unable to accurately classify animals based on skeletal morphology, then so are the paleontologists who have been trained to do this for years.
Alleged living fossils
Now onto the examples Werner shows to Rebekah.
Gastropod: Lioplacodes
At [35:25] Werner compared Lioplacodes with Babylonia perforata
Lioplacodes belongs to Viviparidae, a family of freshwater snails that feed on detritus, algae, and suspended organisms and organic particles. The family is part of the order Architaenioglossa. Babylonia belongs to Babyloniidae, a family of marine predatory snails, within the order Neogastropoda. So, not only are these different species… not only different genera… not only different families. They are from different orders!
I got a few better images below. I can already spot some notable differences, especially when looking at the opening of the shell (see the big notch in Babylonia)
Furthermore, Lioplacodes actually does have relatives, part of the same family Viviparidae, that are alive today, and some of these extant genera are fairly old. The type genus Viviparus (4-6 living species) goes back to the Jurassic, although none of the Jurassic species are alive today. Werner could have pointed to a much better example with a bit of research.
Crocodilian: Albertochampsa
At [36:31] minutes.
This is an example I jumped in the comment section to call it out. The reason why is that, a while ago, I did a presentation to talk about the evolution of crocodilians and their relatives found in the fossil record on Jackson Wheat’s channel. That talk turned into 3 lives streams which combined lasted over 6 hours [link to part 1]. Just a quick TL;DW on my talk. The order (Crocodilia) only goes back to the Late Cretaceous, which is actually relatively young compared to birds, mammals, amphibians, and lizards. And when we move outside the living crocodilians and look at their extinct relatives, we see some things that may look like a crocodile alive today (e.g. Sarcosuchus) but they are not part of Crocodilia. Additionally, we also see forms that are very different. A few examples are large, land walking, predators like the sebechids. One of them was Barinasuchus (see artwork below), which was the largest known terrestrial predator in the last 66 million years.
And my personal favorite croc-relatives are the thalatosuchians, a group of marine croc-relatives, many of which were fully aquatic which never left the sea, except perhaps only for reproduction like what turtles are doing.
We also cannot say that within the order of Crocodilians, all of them have remained the same. One notable extinct group is called Mekosuchinae. These were more closely related to the crocodiles than to the alligators or caimans or gharials. But Mekosuchinae were very odd, since some members show traits that indicate they were mostly terrestrial or at least more terrestrial than any living species of crocodilian. And then there was Purussaurus (see skull below), which was a very close relatives of the living caimans but absolutely enormous, with a body length ranging from 10 to 16 m (32 to 52 ft).
I am not scratching the iceberg here. Even the diversity between living caimans, alligators, crocodiles, and gharials is grossly underappreciated.
In the live chat, I alerted Rebekah that Werner was wrong to call Albertochampsa an alligator. I told them that Albertochampsa is actually a caiman, since I could recall that one trait that sets caimans apart from alligators is the lack of a bony septum in the nose. You can see the alligator (on the right) having this septum.
Carl Werner actually pointed out this difference bony septum, but he dismissed it, claiming that it broke off from the fossil on the right, which is not true.
Now, after looking this up more closely, it turns out that I may be wrong on my assessment as well. Albertochampsa is not a caiman, at least not part of the group of living caimans (Jacarea). The exact position of Albertochampsa relative to alligators and caimans is uncertain since it exhibits transitional features. It is either a distant cousins to caimans, or a distant cousin of alligators, or alligators and caimans are closer cousins to each other than either are to Albertochampsa. So it is close to what the common ancestor of caimans and alligators looked like. But in any case, it not a caiman nor an alligator that is alive today.
At [1:07:23] Rebekah showed my comments to Werner, pointing out that the bony septum is actually important to the identity of the fossil. Werner responded with the following:
WERNER: Uh, you know, uh, I would not consider, and I’m sure, um, that is his name. Did you say?
REBEKAH: Nesslig? That’s how we… I’m sure that’s not his real name. That’s just…
WERNER: Okay, but Nesslig, I’m sure you know more about caimans than I do. There’s no question you would know more than than I do about caimans. And maybe the um fossil should be even it should not be compared to a a alligator, but to a caiman. But if there’s a better match than what I just showed you, then that again suggests that it’s a modern appearing animal. You could say it’s, oh, it’d be better to match it up to a caiman. Fine. It that it’s just makes the point even more strong. But I don’t think you need to. I would like to see a caiman skull next to those two and I’ll have to uh work on that or if you could uh email that to if you can send me some pictures through my website of some caimans, I would be very much appreciative because uh you know, I’m just one guy. I don’t know everything.
The fact that caimans may be a better match to Albertochampsa or not is not the most pressing issue here. My main problem is is that Werner is clearly not knowledgeable enough to make a sound judgement on this matter, since he seemingly is unable to tell the difference between alligators or caimans [which is worse than not being able to tell the difference between tigers and lions], and since he was very quick to dismiss a key trait (the bony septum) to make his claims. It stinks of amateur guess work.
Dragonfly: Urogomphus
At [37:58] minutes.
Urogomphus is part of a distinct family of dragonflies (Aeschnidiidae), which became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous. In fact, the family is so distinct from the living dragonflies that it is outside the dragonfly infraorder (Anisoptera), which includes all the living dragonflies [see this study], meaning Urogomphus is not a dragonfly sensu stricto. In simpler terms, all living dragonflies are more similar to each other than anyone of them are to Urogomphus. Also, just like crocodilians, the diversity of modern dragonflies is also severely underappreciated. There are some 3,000 living species, exhibiting various distinct morphological and developmental features. Thinking that two things are “the same” solely because they are both are dragonflies is specious to say the least.
Nautilus: Cenoceras
At [44:07] minutes.
Werner claims that these look “nearly exactly the same” and that the fact that they are put into different genera “should make you just completely want to puke”. For this I will just quote from sources directly:
Hoving et. al., 2014: Certainly, the Nautilus shell exhibits a general conservatism, but in detail (e.g. shape of the conch, course of sutures and position of the siphuncle), it differs significantly from its latest known ancestors, such as Eutrephoceras and Cenoceras. (see Ward, 1984)
Ward, 1984: Nautilus, the last descendant, is easily differentiable from the ancestral Cenoceras species of the Late Triassic on the basis of suture and cross section. A nonspecialist, however, holding the two shells, would probably find the differences quite slight.
Shimanskii (1962) has examined the nauta Guvenile shell portion prior to deposition of nepionic constriction) of a variety of nautiloids. Among the coiled forms, the nauta of Nautilus is by far the largest, occurring at a shell diameter of approximately 25 mm in all of the extant species. I have recently examined nauta from species of Aturia, Cenoceras, Eutrephoceras, Cymatoceras, and Hercoglossa (Ward, in preparation). In all of these forms, the nauta are at most half the diameter of equivalent stages in Nautilus. Nautilus may be, at hatching, the largest of all cephalopods still extant, and could be one of the largest cephalopods hatching in the history of the class. In summary, Nautilus is quite similar in shell shape and lack of ornament to numerous past species. It can be readily differentiated, however, on sutural and developmental differences.
“sEa PeN”: Arborea
At [47:04] minutes.
The Ediacaran fossil is definitly not a sea pen. While it looks superficially like a sea pen, it’s structure is very different. One of key structural differences is that the branches of sea pens are separated, which is not the case in Arborea.
Laflamme et. al., 2018: It has been previously demonstrated that Ediacaran fronds in which the primary branches are all attached to one another (or to a sheet) could not have functioned in the same way as modern pennatulacean sea pens, which require a constant water flow between the primary branches to feed (Seilacher, [1992](javascript:;); Williams, [1997](javascript:;)).
An affinity to cnidarians was considered before, but most current research puts them outside any living phyla.
Bristle worm: Stephenoscolex
The genus name here is misspelled. It should be Stephenoscolex. In any case, this is a similar situation as the dragonflies. It seems that Stephenoscolex is a stem-polychaete; the ‘stem’ qualifier means that all living polychaetes are more similar to each other than anyone of them is to Stephenoscolex. Although it should be noted that the anterior region of this fossil is so far missing, so this conclusion could change if we get a more complete fossil. There are more complete fossils of stem-polychaetes which show some interesting clues about the evolution of annelid head morphology (see this study). Also note that there are over 10,000 different species of polycheates alive today, so don’t assume that two polycheates are the same.
Lungfish: Sagenodus
At [56:23] minutes.
At [53:51] Werner starts to go through his slides in rapid succession, and most examples he shows do not show genus name, which makes it very difficult to fact check. I won’t go through all of them. I will address this last example for which he provides a genus name. Sagenodus was very distinct, it is not part living lungfish order (Ceratodontiformes) which have lost many skull bones. Sagenodus possessed more bones in the roof of the skull, which was also more solid compared to the living lungfishes. Furthermore, Sagenodus had one significant thing in common with modern lungfishes; the fusion of the teeth into crushing tooth plates. The first lungfishes lacked this feature, so Sagenodus is a good example of a transitional fossil that shows mixture of “primitive” and “modern” traits (source).
A few other notes
Werner also seems to think that the “fossil layers” go down only to the Ediacaran, some 635 million years ago, which is not true. The oldest fossils are from the Archean, some 3.5 billion years ago.
After [1:26:00] Werner makes the bonkers claim that according to evolution we wouldn’t expect to see marine fossils from each period of the Phanerozoic eon. He also calls each period a ‘rock layer’ (singular), which is erroneous. The geological record from each period consists of numerous rock layers, composed of different types of deposits from different environments. Some terrestrial, some marine. And these were deposited over many millions of years. Hence, why would would certainly expect to see marine fossils in marine deposits from each period. The only reason why you wouldn’t expect to see marine fossils from a period that lasted for tens of millions of years is: (A) no marine organisms were around during this time that could fossilize, or (B) there are no marine deposits available for fossil excavation near the surface that date to this period, since these were not formed or they are too deep and out of reach. At [1:38:45] Rebekah showed my question to Werner on screen to explain why wouldn’t expect to see marine organisms from all periods of the Phanerozoic. His answer verbatim:
WERNER: Because you would have to… because there’s land animals in all these layers. So, you would have to rise, have the ocean rise 18 separate different times. And I want you to explain to me how that happened 18 different times. That is crazy. Crazy to raise it up 50 feet would even be crazy. 18 different times. But you have to do it not 50 feet. You really It’s 600 feet. You know, like Missouri is 600 feet. We have saltwater creatures all over Missouri. So it you have to explain it and you go ahead and what we’re listening explain how the oceans rose that many times to get up to these put deposit these saltwater creatures in the middle of the continents on in all these separate layers you know [sighs].
Firstly, sea levels actually HAVE fluctuated across 200 meters (over 650 feet) over the last 540 million years, which is due to the fact that the earth’s climate has alternated between hot ‘greenhouse’ and cold ‘icehouse’ states. A second contributing factor is plate tectonics determines how deep the ocean basins are in total. Image below from a recent paper.
During some of these times, Missouri was indeed submerged. Below is a PaleoMap by Christopher R. Scotese showing how high the sea levels were 85 million years ago.
Secondly, sea levels don’t need to change in order for marine fossils to form and be later found on dry land. A fossil can form in the sea on the ocean floor, and the sedimentary rock can be uplifted later.