표준화석들 : 4억 년(?) 전의 물고기 실러캔스가 살아있었다. : 화석-살아있는 화석 [한국창조과학회 자료실]

미디어위원회

2004-06-15

표준화석들

: 4 억년(?) 전의 물고기 실러캔스가 살아있었다.

(Index Fossils)

by Walt Brown Ph.D.

1800년대 초, 서부 유럽의 몇몇 관측자들이 지층의 측면을 조사하였을 때, 어떤 화석들은 대개 다른 종류의 화석들 위에 놓여있는 퇴적지층에 보존되어 있는 것을 주목하게 되었다. 수십년 후 진화론이 등장하고 나서, 윗 지층의 생물체는 아래 지층의 생물체가 진화되어 나타난 것임에 틀림없다고 결론지었다. 이들 초기의 지질학자들은 홍수기간 동안 생물체들이 그 순서대로 분류(sort)되었다는, 수력학적으로(hydrodynamically) 분명한 이유가 있다는 사실을 깨달을 수 없었다. (Part Ⅱ. Liquefaction : The Origin of Strata and Layered Fossils 참조)

지질학적 시대들은 이러한 각각의 '표준화석 (index fossils)'과 관련되어 있다. 지질시대들은 표준화석이 묻혀 있는 지층 속에 동물과 식물 화석으로 확장되었다. (예를 들어, 실러캔스(coelacanths) 화석은 이것이 묻혀있는 지층의 연대를 7천만 년에서 4억 년(?)으로 평가하게 하는 표준화석이었다.)

오늘날 지층은 거의 항상 그 지층 속에 묻혀있는 화석에 의해서 연대가 결정된다.¹ 그런데 이것은 앞에서 말한 것과 같이 진화론을 가정하고 있다. 그러나 진화론은 화석의 순서를 가정하고 있다. 이것은 순환논법이다.² 더군다나 이것은 실러캔스가 살아서 발견되는 등 많은 모순적인 결과들을 만들어내게 되었다.³

그림 28 : 7천만 살의 물고기? 7천만 년 전에 멸종했다고 생각했던 실러캔스가 1938 년 인도양, 마다가스카르 북서쪽 깊은 바다에서 처음으로 잡혔다. 그때 이후 실러캔스에 대한 보상금이 걸리자, 수백 마리가 잡혔고, 팔렸다. 1998년에는 인도네시아 해안에서도 잡혔다. 어떻게 실러캔스는 7천만 년이라는 광대한 시간을 뛰어 넘어 존재할 수 있는가? 어떻게 실러캔스는 이 광대한 기간 동안 화석기록을 전혀 남기지 않고 있는가?

1938년 이전, 진화론자들은 실러캔스 화석이 발견되는 지층의 연대는 적어도 7천만 년은 되었다고 하였다. 그것은 표준화석 이었다. 오늘날 진화론자들은 사로잡힌 살아있는 실러캔스가 7천만 년 이상의 광대한 시간 동안 진화했음에도 불구하고 실러캔스 화석과 외관상에 전혀 차이가 없음에 자주 놀라움을 표시하고 있다.⁴

실러캔스가 사로잡히기 전에, 진화론자들은 실러캔스는 폐, 큰 뇌, 다리로 진화하기 전의 바닥으로 나있는 4개의 지느러미를 가졌다는 잘못된 믿음을 가지고 있었다.⁵ 그 이유는 실러캔스, 또는 비슷한 물고기가 얕은 바다의 바닥을 기어다녔고, 폐는 공기로 가득 찼으며, 네 다리를 가진 최초의 육상동물로 진화했음이 틀림없었다고 생각했기 때문이었다. 이 물고기는 모든 양서류, 파충류, 공룡, 조류, 포유류, 사람의 조상이었다고 수천만의 학생들에게 가르쳐져 왔었다. (당신의 조상은 물고기였는가?)

처음 두 마리의 포획된 실러캔스를 개인적으로 연구한 남아프리카의 유명한 물고기 전문가 스미스(J. L. B. Smith) 교수는 실러캔스를 '오래된 네 다리(Old Fourlegs)' 라는 별칭으로 불렀고, 그는 1956년에 이 제목으로 책을 썼다. 그러나 1987년 한스 프리크(Hans Fricke)가 이끈 독일팀은 6마리의 실러캔스의 자연 생태에 대하여 촬영을 하였다. 그들은 얕은 바다를 네 다리로 기어다녔는가? 그들은 폐와 큰 뇌를 가지고 있었는가? 전혀 아니었다.⁶ 사실 그들은 100-360 m 바다 속에서 살면서, 시간의 대부분을 물구나무를 서서 먹이를 찾는데 소비하고 있었다.

*참조 : 미스터리 물고기’ 실러캔스 4억년 전 화석 발견 (2012. 4. 11. 서울신문)
http://nownews.seoul.co.kr/news/newsView.php?ref=nc&id=20120411601003

References and Notes

1.'Ever since William Smith [the founder of the index fossil technique] at the beginning of the 19th century, fossils have been and still are the best and most accurate method of dating and correlating the rocks in which they occur. ... Apart from very ‘modern’ examples, which are really archaeology, I can think of no cases of radioactive decay being used to date fossils.” Derek Ager, 'Fossil Frustrations,” New Scientist, Vol. 100, 10 November 1983, p. 425.

2.'It cannot be denied that from a strictly philosophical standpoint geologists are here arguing in a circle. The succession of organisms has been determined by a study of their remains embedded in the rocks, and the relative ages of the rocks are determined by the remains of organisms that they contain.” R. H. Rastall, 'Geology,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 10, 1954, p. 168.

* 'Are the authorities maintaining, on the one hand, that evolution is documented by geology and, on the other hand, that geology is documented by evolution? Isn’t this a circular argument?” Larry Azar, 'Biologists, Help!” BioScience, Vol. 28, November 1978, p. 714.

* 'The intelligent layman has long suspected circular reasoning in the use of rocks to date fossils and fossils to date rocks. The geologist has never bothered to think of a good reply, feeling that explanations are not worth the trouble as long as the work brings results. This is supposed to be hard-headed pragmatism.” J. E. O’Rourke,

'Pragmatism Versus Materialism in Stratigraphy,” American Journal of Science, Vol. 276, January 1976, p. 47.

'The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning, if it insists on using only temporal concepts, because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales.” Ibid., p. 53.

Although O’Rourke attempts to justify current practices of stratigraphers, he recognizes the inherent problems associated with such circular reasoning.

* 'But the danger of circularity is still present. For most biologists the strongest reason for accepting the evolutionary hypothesis is their acceptance of some theory that entails it. There is another difficulty. The temporal ordering of biological events beyond the local section may critically involve paleontological correlation, which necessarily presupposes the non-repeatability of organic events in geologic history. There are various justifications for this assumption but for almost all contemporary paleontologists it rests upon the acceptance of the evolutionary hypothesis.” Kitts, p. 466.

* 'It is a problem not easily solved by the classic methods of stratigraphical paleontology, as obviously we will land ourselves immediately in an impossible circular argument if we say, firstly that a particular lithology is synchronous on the evidence of its fossils, and secondly that the fossils are synchronous on the evidence of the lithology.” Derek V. Ager, The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record, 2nd edition (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1981), p. 68.

* 'The charge that the construction of the geologic scale involves circularity has a certain amount of validity.” David M. Raup, 'Geology and Creationism,” Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, Vol. 54, March 1983, p. 21.

* In a taped, transcribed, and approved 1979 interview with Dr. Donald Fisher, the state paleontologist for New York, Luther Sunderland asked Fisher how he dated certain fossils. Answer: 'By the Cambrian rocks in which they were found.” When Sunderland asked if this was not circular reasoning, Fisher replied, 'Of course; how else are you going to do it?” 'The Geologic Column: Its Basis and Who Constructed It,” Bible-Science News Letter, December 1986, p. 6.

* 'The prime difficulty with the use of presumed ancestral-descendant sequences to express phylogeny is that biostratigraphic data are often used in conjunction with morphology in the initial evaluation of relationships, which leads to obvious circularity.” Bobb Schaeffer, Max K. Hecht, and Niles Eldredge, 'Phylogeny and Paleontology,” Evolutionary Biology, Vol. 6 (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1972), p. 39.

3. Peter Forey, 'A Home from Home for Coelacanths,” Nature, Vol. 395, 24 September 1998, pp. 319-320.

4.'Few creatures have endured such an immense span of time with so little change as coelacanths. The cutaway drawing of a present-day specimen seems almost identical with the 140-million-year-old fossil found in a quarry in southern West Germany. ... Why have coelacanths remained virtually unchanged for eons ... 30 million generations?” [Answer: They were fossilized recently, at the time of the flood. W.B.] Hans Fricke, 'Coelacanths: The Fish That Time Forgot,” National Geographic, Vol. 173, June 1988, p. 833.

* 'Throughout the hundreds of millions of years the coelacanths have kept the same form and structure. Here is one of the great mysteries of evolution - that of the unequal plasticity of living things.” Jacques Millot, 'The Coelacanth,” Scientific American, Vol. 193, December 1955, p. 37.

* 'The coelacanths have changed very little since their first known appearance in the Upper Devonian.” A. Smith Woodward, as quoted by Keith S. Thomson, Living Fossil: The Story of the Coelacanth (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Ltd., 1991), p. 70.

* 'What is even more remarkable is that in spite of drastic changes in the world environment, the coelacanths are still much the same organically as their ancestors. ... In the meantime, research is continuing ... and will try to penetrate the secret of the adaptability which has enabled them to live through many geological eras under widely differing conditions without modifying their constitution.” Millot, p. 39.

* '... the coelacanths have undergone little change in 300 million years ...” Ommanney, p. 74.

5.'... much attention has been focused on their fins in the hope that they will tell more about how fins became limbs.” Ibid.

* 'Zoologists originally thought that the paired fins of coelacanths and the fossil lobe-fins functioned as true limbs, as props to lever the fish against the solid substrate of the bottom sand or against rocks.” Thomson, p. 160.

* 'For the coelacanth was a member of a very ancient class of fishes which was supposed to have disappeared some 70 million years ago. This great group of fishes, called crossopterygians, flourished during that decisive era in the history of the earth - when the fish, taking on legs and lungs, went forth to conquer the continents.” Millot, p. 34.

* Dr. Jacques Millot, who headed many detailed studies of freshly caught coelacanths, still held out hope as of 1955.

Perhaps their stalked fins permit them to creep along the rocks like seals. Ibid., p. 38.

This myth was buried only after Dr. Hans Fricke’s team observed coelacanths in their natural habitat in 1987. Their bottom fins have nothing to do with legs or creeping. Why did Millot ignore the facts he knew best? The coelacanth, he thought, solved a big problem. In 1955, Millot wrote:

One of the great problems of evolution has been to find anatomical links between the fishes and their land-invading descendants ... For a long time evolutionists were troubled by this major gap between fishes and the amphibians. But the gap has now been bridged by studies of ancient fishes, and this is where the coelacanth comes in. Ibid., pp. 35-36.

Later (1987), after studying live coelacanths, the scientific world learned that Millot was wrong. The coelacanth did not bridge this gap. Notice that leading evolutionists have not publicly announced that the fish-to-amphibian problem is back.

* 'He [J. L. B. Smith] was able to report [in the journal Nature] that, like the lungfishes, the fish had an air bladder or lung (on the basis of the taxidermist’s report of the discarded viscera), which was a median rather than paired structure.” Thomson, p. 39. [It is now recognized that the discarded 'bag” was not a lung, but an oil-filled swimming bladder. W.B.]

* 'At this time [supposedly 380 million years ago] all the lobe-fins probably had functional air breathing lungs. ... air breathing gives a great advantage in shallow tropical freshwater environments.” Thomson, p. 212. [This is what evolution demands, not what any evidence shows - as live, newly discovered coelacanths later demonstrated. W.B.]

6.'I confess I’m sorry we never saw a coelacanth walk on its fins.” Fricke, p. 838.

'... we never saw any of them walk, and it appears the fish is unable to do so.” Ibid., p. 837.

* 'The brain of a 90-pound coelacanth weighs less than 50 grams [1.6 ounces] - that is, no more than one 15,000th of the body weight. No present-day vertebrate that we know of has so small a brain in relation to its size.” Millot, p. 39.

*참조 ; 살아있는 화석에서 변화의 정지

https://creation.kr/LivingFossils/?idx=39199206&bmode=view

살아있는 화석을 설명해보려는 진화론자들

https://creation.kr/LivingFossils/?idx=28360428&bmode=view

‘살아있는 화석’ 생물들은 오래될 수 없다

https://creation.kr/LivingFossils/?idx=18969736&bmode=view

진화론과 상충되는 최근의 화석 발견들

https://creation.kr/Circulation/?idx=1757577&bmode=view

‘살아있는 화석’을 진화론에 적합시키기

https://creation.kr/LivingFossils/?idx=13206179&bmode=view

살아있는 화석: 창조론의 강력한 논거 ; 공룡 지층에서 현대 생물들이 발견되고 있다.

https://creation.kr/Circulation/?idx=1294988&bmode=view