Evolution of Species

Special Creation

1. The Creation took place in one particular location (The garden of Eden).

2. The creation was accomplished in one particular time period (seven days).

3. The creation was directed and constructed by God and therefore divine in nature.

1664 Archbishop James Ussher used Old Testament genealogies to calculate that the earth was precisely 5,668 years old.

• “Heaven and Earth, Centre and substance were made in the same instant of time and clouds full of water and man were created by the Trinity on the 26th of October 4004 B.C. at 9:00 in the Morning.”

The Great Chain of Being

• The hierarchal order of God’s creations from the highest to lowest of life forms. – Example: God

Angels Man Beast Plants

• Species are unchanged since their creation, or immutable, and that variation within each type is strictly limited.

Special Creation’s Statements of Fact

• Species were created independent of each other

• They do not change through time

• The creation was recent.

Evidence of Change Through Time

The Renaissance brought new scientific enquire

• Biogeography: The study of the distribution of plants and animals around the world

• Geology: The study of the earths crust in order to understand its structure and origin

• Comparative Anatomy: Comparing similarities

and differences in the body plans of various biological organisms

Biogeography poses hard questions for Special Creation

• If the creation of life occurred in one particular geographical location, how did plants and animals cross great oceans and mountain ranges to get to isolated areas of the earth?

• If all life radiated out from a central location, why don’t we find life dispersed evenly from that center? How is it that we find groups of organisms only in specific areas of the earth i.e.…Kangaroos only in Australia, Polar bears found only in the Artic and Penguins in the Antarctic?

Insights concerning the age of the earth arise from Geology

A. The earth is very old

1. The theory of Uniformitarianism: The geological processes that are currently shaping the earth

today are the same ones that have shaped it in the past.

- James Hutton and Charles Lyell

2. Radiometric dating, which uses the rate of radioactive decay in rocks as a stopwatch, convincingly dates the earth to 4.5 billion years old.

Geological insights cont.

B. The fossil record details a history different than that described in the Special creation

1. Since the conception of life on earth, many organisms have gone extinct.

- Extinctions are evidence that Earth’s flora and fauna have changed through time.

2. The creation did not end 7000 years ago but is a continual process leading to the continual rise of new species adapting to their environment.

The law of Succession

3. Faunal Succession: Fossil record shows that life developed from simple to complex. The Older the geological

strata, the simpler the fossil structure found in it are.

The law of Succession

• Fossils of marsupials in Australia were closely related to the marsupials currently living in Australia.

• Fossils in Argentina look nothing like the fossils in Australia but instead look like the animals in Argentina (ex. Glyptodonts and armadillos).

• Can the special creation explain this?

The law of Succession cont-

• Today’s species are descended with modification from ancestors that lived in the same region; it is to be expected that they would bear a stronger resemblance to their recent ancestors than to their more distantly related kin in other parts of the world.

Geologic TimeGeologic Time

Transitional Forms

• Species which are intermediate in body form between two groups of organisms.

• Species that are intermediate in time in the fossil record.

Archaeopteryx

Comparative Anatomy

• A human arm, a whale flipper, and a bat wing all differ in size, shape and function, yet they consist of the same tissues and bones arranged in the same overall patterns on the body.

• Why are animals that seem so different and live in such different habitats structured so much alike ?

Homology

• “The organ in different animals under every variety of form and function.” Richard Owen

• Structural homology– The forelimbs of mammals that are structurally

very similar but functions vary differently.– Analogous structures on the other hand are body

parts from organisms that are very distant evolutionarily but have converged in response to similar environmental presures.

• Developmental homology

Ontogeny

Comparative Anatomy Cont.

• Ontogeny begets Phylogeny– Ontogeny is the study of the development of an embryo

through its various developmental stages

– Phylogeny is the study of the development of a species through time

– The development of an embryo mimics the development of that species through time

Molecular Homology

• All organisms studied to date use the same nucleotide codons to specify the same amino acids to be incorporated into proteins

• An enormous number of alternative codes is theoretically possible, some of which work just as well or better than the real code.

• There would be a distinct advantage if organisms had their own code.

Shared Flaws

• On chromosome 17 the gene for a protein called PMP- 22 is flanked on both sides by identical sequences of DNA.

• The proximal CMT1A repeat, near the gene for PMP-22, is a duplication of the distal repeat

• A genetic flaw– Three copies = Charcot

Marie Tooth disease– 1 copies palsies

Comparative Anatomy cont

• Vestigial organs– Remnants of body parts

which no longer serve a function.

– Example, pelvic girdle bones in snakes or tail bones in humans

• The presence of vestigial traits is inexplicable under the Theory of Special Creation.

Vestigial organs

• Other Examples– Mexican tetra

– The brown Kiwi

– Arrector pili

– The digits in chicken wings and feet

– Hind legs of whales

– Pseudogenes

New Ideas

• George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon – Life to multiply faster than

its food supply

– Variation within species existed and were heritable.

– Older earth to account for the stratification seen in geological layers.

– Forms could change to a degree but not into different species.

1707 - 1788

Erasmus DarwinOrganic life beneath the shoreless wavesWas born and nurs'd in ocean's pearly caves;First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;These, as successive generations bloom,New powers acquire and larger limbs assume;Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing. Erasmus Darwin. The Temple of Nature. 1802

1731 -1802

Lamarck

• Fist to publicly state his ideas of evolutionary change.

• Acquired Characteristics.

1744 - 1829

Philosophie Zoologique

• Underlying the whole was a 'tendency to progression', a principle that Creation is in a constant state of advancement. It was an innate quality of nature that organisms constantly 'improved' by successive generation, too slowly to be perceived but observable in the fossil record. Mankind sat at the top of this chain of progression, having passed through all the previous stages in prehistory.

George Cuvier

• Demonstrate with conclusive evidence that extinction had occurred.

• Theory of catastrophism which rigidly maintained the fixity of species.

1769 - 1832

Charles Darwin

Natural selection

• All organisms have the ability to out reproduce their natural resources. Thus, there is competition for limited resources

• There is variation among individuals in every population. Thus, some individuals within the population will compete better for natural resources than others

• Those who compete best will live longer and have more off-spring than those who can’t compete as well.

• Traits and genes which allow an organism to compete better will be passed on and become more common in the population. Thus the population evolves.

Thomas Huxley

• Nicknamed “Darwin’s bulldog”

• Outspoken defender and advocate for Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.

• Famous debate with Archbishop Samuel Wilberforce

Richard Owen

• One of the foremost naturalist in English history.

• Hunterian lecturer for the Royal college.– Hunterian collection consisted of over

13,000 human and animal remains bought by the crown.

– These were passed to the Royal College, with the stipulation that the collection be made available to the public by the founding of a lecture series and a museum.

– Lectures were attended by royalty and many important figures in Victorian England.

• Theory of archetype• Coined the term dinosauria (instead of

Herpeton)

Richard Owen

• He was cold and imperious, and without scruples

• His position and gifts as an anatomist allowed him to get away with the most barefaced dishonesties.– Son– Huxley’s position at the school of mines.– Systematically took credit for discoveries

of others. – Stole corpses and their parts.– Robert Grant– Gideon Mantell– Channing Pearce. Royal Medal for his

paper on the extinct mollusk belemnite.

• Huxley finally had him voted off the councils of the Zoological and Royal Societies. A gaunt and sinister villain in a Victorian

melodrama? No, just Sir Richard Owen