Fossil captures ancient insects having sex

By AdminCalvary | January 27, 2015

”Catching” a natural act in the fossil world is fairly rare. And that is only a minor reason this find is so interesting. From a creationist standpoint, this is great evidence that millions of years is a hoax. From an evolutionist standpoint, this poses several problems for their philosophy. As always, assumptions in the article are in red and my comments are in blue.

By Tia Ghose

Published November 07, 2013

LiveScience

About 165 million years ago Bam! froghoppers’ mating session was interrupted by a volcanic eruption.

Now, scientists have unearthed a fossil in China that shows the two creatures immortalized in the act. The discovery, detailed Nov. 6 in the journal PLOS ONE, is the earliest fossil of insect sex ever discovered. It reveals that, at least for a group of sap-sucking insects called froghoppers, sex hasn’t changed much over the last 165 million years. (Sex hasn’t changed ever is more like it. If we think logically about evolution, it requires that there are imperfections in structures and processes. If the process or structure hasn’t undergone any significant changes in 165 million years, then that suggests that it was already the best it could ever be. It also suggests that changes throughout the ecosystem did not have a catastrophic impact on the species at any point during that 165 million years. )

Rare finds
Fossils of insects copulating usually trapped in amber are fairly rare, with only about 40 found around the world known to date, said study co-author Chung Kun Shih, a visiting professor from Capital Normal University in China. But until now, the oldest fossil showing insect sex dated to about 100 million years ago.

‘The male and female organ — we can see it. That’s really rare.’

The researchers were excavating a fossil-rich area of Inner Mongolia in China when they discovered the two creatures clinging to each other.

In this region, “insect fossils are so good we can see the detailed structure, including the hair,” Shih said.

The insects, of the species Anthoscytina perpetua, are face-to-face, with the male’s sex organ, called the aedeagus, clearly inserted into the female’s sex organ, called the bursa copulatrix.

“The male and female organ we can see it,” Shih told LiveScience. “That’s really rare.”

The fossils dated to the middle Jurassic Period, about 165 million years ago. (We are not told in this article just how the 165 million years was arrived at, but it is likely in this case that the sediment layer it was found in was identified by a benchmark fossil which is assumed to be a particular age because it always shows up in a particular sediment layer. The big problem with this type of dating is that the fossil is dated by the rock layer AND the rock layer is dated by the fossil. This is what logicians call circular reasoning. It is the same as if we say that if A=B and C=D, then A=D.)

Same old sex
Despite 165 million years having passed, modern-day froghoppers look anatomically very similar to the Jurassic insects, with symmetric sex organs.

Froghopper sex hasn’t changed much in those 165 million years, either. The fossilized male’s abdominal section is twisted in order to better insert his sex organ, a position also seen in modern insect species. Froghoppers today also prefer to mate either face-to-face, when standing on a small twig or side by side on a leaf or tree trunk. (It never ceases to amaze me that scientists will look at this evidence – a species that looks exactly the same as it did 165 million years ago, does the same thing in the same way, and they cannot see the truth. There have been no significant changes, and the reason for that is that there has not been 165 million years.)

The team hypothesizes that the two insects were in a lover’s hug when a volcanic eruption released a plume of poisonous gas, killing all life in the area, including the bacteria and fungus that would have normally decomposed their bodies. Later, wind or other natural forces tossed the love bugs into a nearby lake, where they were buried under layers of sediment and protected for millions of years. (OK, so here is where we find out about the volcano. As it turns out, they are assuming the insects and all other life in the region were killed by poisonous gas, but they were buried in sediments formed in water – kind of like a flood.)

The team isn’t sure whether the insects were truly face-to-face during sex or were originally side by side and later shifted by natural forces after they died. (God made all kinds of critters about 6000 years ago. He made them perfect. Man sinned and brought death to this perfect world and the perfect creatures God created. God sent a great flood to punish man and cleanse the earth. During and after that cataclysmic event, there were volcanic eruptions that buried all land and sky life on earth save the creatures God sent to Noah and the ark. We are not told specifically if insects were saved on the ark or if God preserved them in some other way, but we can be sure of God’s mercy and the truth of the Bible. And the more evidence scientists uncover within the fossil record, the more they prove that God created and that there was a global catastrophe. They may say it is many catastrophes, but the evidence is convincing for a global flood.)

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/11/07/fossil-captures-ancient-insects-having-sex/?intcmp=features

Posted in Jerry's Corner on Science