Dinosaur Fossils and Modern Chicken Fossils
Why no dinosaur fossils have been discovered along side of modern chicken fossils?
The premise of your question assumes that some creatures are modern while others are not. That is the premise of Darwinian Theory so I am not surprised that this question would naturally be raised.
When using the evolutionary time frame we usually separate living organisms into the two categories that you mentioned, e.g. modern or prehistoric. As those who have acknowledged the biblical Flood as the major factor in the creation of the geologic column as well as the fossil record, we would not by apt to buy into the classic evolutionary argument concerning change over time.
For instance, a swim bladder in fish is usually referred to either as a primitive or prehistoric feature of early fish and evolutionary scientists believe it evolved from a lung that prehistoric lungfish fish possessed. The fact that today modern lungfish exist seems not to be a problem for the evolutionary faithful. The actual mechanism for how this alleged change occurred can be categorized as just one in a long list of “just so” stories with regard to Darwinian evolution. The presence of swim bladders in many fish would seem to be the logical precursor to lungs as they evolved to inhabit the land. However, the presence of lungs in fossil placoderms and several living fish species shows that lungs may have evolved into swim bladders—the reverse of what would be expected. Fish, not needing lungs to survive, allegedly tested lungs early on in evolutionary history. When lungs were needed to invade the land, the genes just needed to be switched on. The development of lungs and swim bladders is totally consistent with the simultaneous creation of organisms, but evolution has a harder time making it “just so.”
Another issue is the concept that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago when we have what is commonly referred to as “living fossils.” One of the most embarrassing was the discovery of the Coelacanth.
This living fossil allegedly went extinct 65 million years ago and was thought to be the closest relative in the evolutionary jump from fish to amphibians. Imagine everyone’s surprise when this prehistoric fish was captured alive and well in 1938 in the nets of a fisherman. It was caught at the mouth of the Chalumna River on the east coast of South Africa.
The new thought concerning dinosaurs is that they are closer birds than reptiles on the phylogenetic tree. Today the study of species has been given a new and improved definition; this is directly related to the fact that even Darwin could not give a proper working definition for the term species. In his book, Darwin referred to species as “a distant act of creation.” Today science uses the term clade, e.g. a group of genetically related organisms, to communicate what is meant by the term species. These creatures that avoid extinction, remain relatively unchanged across the eons of evolutionary time, are sometimes called living fossils.
Evolutionary scientists like to tell us that this term “living fossil” is often misunderstood and they have developed a new term, e.g. the Lazarus taxon. This term refers to the reappearance of a species or group of species that suddenly reappears, rather than a living fossil that has remained virtually unchanged for tens or even hundreds of millions of years such as living fossils. Still, the evolutionary faithful continue to connect the dots in their phylogenetic trees or phylograms/cladograms. This is extremely disconcerting given the following quotes from the late guru of Neo-Darwinian Evolution, Dr. Stephen J. Gould.
“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches … in any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the gradual transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and “fully formed.” Stephen Jay Gould, Evolution’s erratic pace, Natural History 86 (5):14, May 1977.
And in an exchange between Dr. Gould and Colin Patterson the following quote emerges:
“I will lay it on the line—there is not one such fossil for which one could make
a watertight argument.” Colin Patterson, personal communication. Luther Sunderland,
Darwin’s Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems, 4th edition, 1988, 88-90.
The fact remains that there are fossil chickens or the evolutionary ancestors to fossil chickens in the fossil record, found next to other now extinct dinosaurs. The modern chicken is thought to be the direct ancestor of the wild jungle fowl, Gallus gallus. They were thought to be domesticated in the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains approximately 5,000 years ago. It is no surprise to Bible believers that this timeline coincides perfectly with the timeline outlined in the Word of God.
