Claim CC220.1:
Insect fossils appear in abundance, but the record of insect origins is
completely blank.
Source:
Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master
Books,
p. 86.
Brown, Walt, 1995. In the Beginning: Compelling evidence for creation
and the Flood. Phoenix, AZ: Center for Scientific Creation, p. 10.
Response:
- Insect fossils before the major diversification of insects (in the
Carboniferous) are far from abundant. Insects are believed, from
genomic data, to have originated near the beginning of the Silurian
(434.2-421.1 Mya; Gaunt and Miles 2002), but the first two hexapod
fossils are from Rhynie chert, about 396-407 Mya (Engel and Grimaldi
2004; Whalley and Jarzembowski 1981). As of 2004, only two other
insect fossils were known from the Devonian (Labandeira et al. 1988).
Two of these fossils consist only of mandibles, and another is a
crushed head. In short, the first eighty-five million years of the
history of insects is preserved in only four fossils, three of them
quite fragmentary. With such a scarcity of fossils, the lack of
fossils showing the origins of insects is unremarkable.
References:
- Engel, M. S. and D. A. Grimaldi, 2004. New light shed on the oldest
insect. Nature 427: 627-630.
- Gaunt, M. W. and M. A. Miles, 2002. An insect molecular clock dates the
origin of the insects and accords with palaeontological and
biogeographic landmarks. Molecular Biology and Evolution 19(5):
748-761.
- Labandeira, C. C., B. S. Beall and F. M. Hueber, 1988.
Early insect diversification: evidence from a Lower Devonian
bristletail from Quebec. Science 242: 913-916.
- Whalley, P. and E. A. Jarzembowski, 1981. A new assessment of
Rhyniella, the earliest known insect, from the Devonian of Rhynie,
Scotland. Nature 291: 317.
created 2003-7-25, modified 2004-3-12
