Ants in Amber: Evidence of Stasis
One of the “six most incredible fossils preserved in amber turned out to be 99 million-year-old ants. It turns out that amber (tree resin) is one of nature’s best preservatives. According to evolutionary thinking, this amber is 99-100 million years old. These specimens would have roamed the earth with the dinosaurs. While most dinosaurs could not survive the post-Flood environment, ants as well as a host of other insects have evidently remained unchanged, thereby defying evolutionary theory’s paradigm of change over time.
Amber sometimes contains animals or plant matter that became caught in the resin as it was secreted. Here is a short list of these perfectly preserved specimens. Insects, spiders and even their webs, annelids, frogs, crustaceans, bacteria and amoebae, marine microfossils, wood, flowers and fruit, hair, feathers and other small organisms have been recovered in Cretaceous ambers (deposited c. 130 million years ago). The oldest amber to bear fossils (mites) is from the Carnian (Triassic, 230 million years ago) of north-eastern Italy.
As the evolutionary crow flies, insects evolved at least 420 million years ago. What makes these and other specimens so unique is that they are virtually identical to their modern counterparts. When evolutionary scientists find these insects or other organisms that are fossilized along with allegedly tens to hundreds of millions of years old dinosaurs, they give them different names so they can be classified as different species than their modern counterparts. Forgive the pun, but there is only one fly in this ointment. It is the fact that a fossilized rabbit discovered in India is supposed to be 53 million years old, quite close to the time evolutionists think dinosaurs were still alive. (Handwerk, B., “Easter Surprise: World’s Oldest Rabbit Bones Found,” National Geographic News, March 21, 2008.)
Couple these discoveries with what evolutionists have dubbed the Lazarus Taxon and evolution begins to crumble. This is category of once thought to be extinct species that have turned up alive and well despite their former demise. Since these discoveries, evolutionists have scrambled to explain these living fossils by coming up with even more bizarre labels Since these discoveries, evolutionists have scrambled to explain these living fossils by coming up with even more bizarre labels. like the Elvis taxon, a look-alike that has supplanted an extinct taxon through convergent evolution, and the Zombie taxon that contains specimens that have been collected from strata younger than the extinction of the taxon.
Later such fossils turn out to be freed from the original seam and refossilized in a younger sediment. For example, they theorize a trilobite that gets eroded out of its Cambrian-aged limestone matrix, and reworked into Miocene-aged siltstone.
And who can forget the most famous example of the Lazarus taxon, the coelacanth. This living fossil is a member of a subclass (Actinistia) thought to have gone extinct 66 million years ago. That was until a live specimen showed up in a fishing net in 1938.
According to evolutionary dogma, ants and other such resilient insects may indeed inherit the earth. Personally, I would rather place my faith in the Creator who became my Savior. He designed all life to “be fruitful and multiply,” Gen. 1:22, 28. He genetically pre-programmed every living organism to reproduce itself “according to their various kinds, Gen. 1:11. He has ordained that the “meek shall inherit the earth,” Matt. 5:5. Only those who have truly been humbled by God’s grace are adopted into God’s family. Then our inheritance is secure in our King.
In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory, Eph. 1:13-14.
Submitting by Steve Rowitt, Ph.D.
