"Platypus-zilla. That’s what they’re calling a new fossil that is shaking up the platypus family tree.
Before proceeding, we should note that the new platypus fossil is being deduced from a single tooth. The news articles explain that platypus teeth are distinctive enough to not only identify the animal, but also gauge its size. Experts believe this one was probably a meter in length (twice the size of living specimens), large enough to eat frogs and small turtles. Artwork of the giant platypus gulping down a turtle begins National Geographic’s coverage. “King Kong platypus was an ancient bone cruncher” was Michael Slezak’s headline on New Scientist, ready for a movie blockbuster screenwriter.
So what are the evolutionists saying about this? National Geographic put “Shakes Up Evolutionary Tree” in its headline. Basically, it shakes up the idea that the platypus enjoyed a nice, uncomplicated, linear descent, growing smaller and losing teeth as adults over time. This species“doesn’t fit that narrative.” It must have been on an evolutionary “side branch,” the new narrative goes. It’s larger than the previously-believed ancestor – which was already a fully-fledged platypus. New Scientist isn’t quite sure how to evolve this monster, quoting Michael Archer, one of the discoverers:
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind...
Genesis 1:25
Before proceeding, we should note that the new platypus fossil is being deduced from a single tooth. The news articles explain that platypus teeth are distinctive enough to not only identify the animal, but also gauge its size. Experts believe this one was probably a meter in length (twice the size of living specimens), large enough to eat frogs and small turtles. Artwork of the giant platypus gulping down a turtle begins National Geographic’s coverage. “King Kong platypus was an ancient bone cruncher” was Michael Slezak’s headline on New Scientist, ready for a movie blockbuster screenwriter.
So what are the evolutionists saying about this? National Geographic put “Shakes Up Evolutionary Tree” in its headline. Basically, it shakes up the idea that the platypus enjoyed a nice, uncomplicated, linear descent, growing smaller and losing teeth as adults over time. This species“doesn’t fit that narrative.” It must have been on an evolutionary “side branch,” the new narrative goes. It’s larger than the previously-believed ancestor – which was already a fully-fledged platypus. New Scientist isn’t quite sure how to evolve this monster, quoting Michael Archer, one of the discoverers:
“Fossils showed they were getting steadily smaller, that they were losing their teeth and becoming hyper-specialised. And then suddenly this gigantic King Kong platypus turns up. It shows platypuses were experimenting with side branches [on the evolutionary tree],” says Archer. “This new giant platypus-zilla, it raises more questions than it answers. If it was so divergent, what was its lifestyle? Did it have venomous spurs? Did it have a flat tail? Was it aquatic?”
Science Daily says of the lineage, “The oldest platypus fossils come from 61 million-year-old rocks in southern South America” (but see the claim of one 112 million years old from Australia, 11/27/07, its stasis rationalized by slow rates of evolution). This new fossil is much more recent, estimated at 5–15 million years old in the evolutionary sequence, in the time frame of a previous but smaller record holder thought to be 15 million years old. Yet both have been classified in the same genus, Obdurodon (“durable tooth”), whereas the living platypus is classified as Ornithorhynchus (“bird snout”; its species name is, appropriately, paradoxus). Wikipedia’s article on the platypus admits, “The platypus and other monotremes were very poorly understood.” Slezak, nevertheless, tries to sound confident amidst the puzzled looks:
“Monotremes [platypus and echidna] are absolutely fascinating subjects for evolution,” says Jenny Graves from La Trobe University in Melbourne who was part of a team that sequenced the platypus genome in 2008. “Although they are definitely mammals, they retain many reptile characteristics like laying eggs — they are real evolutionary intermediates.”
“But it’s sometimes hard to tell if a feature was ancestral to all mammals, or specific to platypus or echidna,” she says. Any further information about this new species could therefore be important to understanding how mammals evolved.
It’s unfair to call the platypus a “real evolutionary intermediate” when its earliest known ancestor was already a platypus,.." CEHAnd God made the beast of the earth after his kind...
Genesis 1:25
