- Series:Evolution’s Mistakes, Plants, Transcript English
Matthew 6:28
“And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:”
It has often been said that if just one piece of evidence does not fit with an established theory, then that theory must be discarded. However, this never seems to happen to the theory of evolution. Instead, it gets adapted and altered at the edges of the theory. So every so often, a scientific article appears that reports that a certain aspect of evolutionary theory is having to be completely rethought. The latest topic is a very big one. It appears that the whole of evolutionary thought about flowering plants has to be redone.
The evolutionary date usually given for the appearance of flowering plants – known as angiosperms – is 130 million years. Now this date cannot be viewed in isolation. Most flowering plants require insects, or other animals, to act as pollinators. Therefore, the evolutionary date for angiosperms must be closely tied to the evolutionary dates for insects, and, to a lesser extent, for mammals.
However, recently a fossil flowering plant from China, called Nanjinganthus dendrostyla, has been given an evolutionary date of 174 million years. This plant clearly has a full flower. One article says that the discovery “shakes up widely accepted theories of plant evolution”. Its date has been assigned, because of the rock layers, in which the fossil was found. Creationists point out that the rock layers are nothing to do with age, but actually indicate the order in which pre-Flood ecosystems were covered by the encroaching floodwater.
Prayer: Father, thank You that You tell us that we are worth more than the flowers, however bright and intricate they are. Amen.
Author: Paul F. Taylor
Ref: eLife. “Fossils suggest flowers originated 50 million years earlier than thought.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 18 December 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181218115205.htm>. Image: A fossil flower (not the one mentioned above), CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported.
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