Whether
or Not Horse Evolution Lends Any Credibility to Darwinism
Posted by +Mahesh
Summary: Horse series is touted as the strongest evidence in support of
Darwin’s mechanism of evolution. However this is not correct. Since, there is
no evidence that supports migration of horse ancestors from North America to
Asia across Bering Land Bridge.
The evolution of the horse pertains to the phylogenetic ancestry of the modern horse from the small,
dog-sized, forest-dwelling Eohippus over geologic time scales. Paleozoologists have been able to
piece together a more complete picture of the modern horse's evolutionary lineage than that of any other
animal.
The horse belongs to an order known
as Perissodactyla, or "odd-toed ungulates", which all share hooved feet
and an odd number of toes on each foot, as well as mobile upper lips and a similar tooth structure.
This means that horses share a common ancestry with tapirs and rhinoceroses.
Horse evolution is cited as the best example in
support of Darwin’s mechanism of evolution essentially consisting of
continuous, gradual evolution by accumulation of random variations over immense
periods of time. In this context,
Equidae fossils discovered are said to form a horse series that is consistent
with Darwin’s mechanism of evolution.
North America is presumed to be horse’s natural
habitat. About 55 million years ago there is supposed to be a dry land in the
place where present strait of Bering is. However there is no geological or
geographical evidence to support this contention. There are only presumptions.
The ancestors of American horses migrated to Asia, later Europe and distant
Africa along this “bridge”. Even archeologists cannot find their tracks. Even
the timeline of horse migration is different in different references varying
from 25 million years to 5 million years. For unknown reasons 30 million years
ago horses disappeared from America. No reason for extinction of Equidae family
from North America has ever been provided. One of the suppositions is that the
sting of some fly was poisonous to horses. Moreover if horses became extinct
from North America 25 million years back, then where were the horses left to
migrate to Asia along Bering Land Bridge.Only in the 16th century horses were
brought to America by conquistadors.
The Bering Strait is approximately 82
kilometres (51 mi; 44 nmi) wide at its narrowest point, with depth
varying between 98 feet (30 m) and 160 feet (49 m).It connects the Chukchi Sea (part of the Arctic Ocean) to the north with the Bering Sea (part of the Pacific Ocean) to the south. This is supposed to have transformed into
Bering Land Bridge, several times in the geological and geographical history of
Earth to permit migration of flora and fauna across North American and European
continents and then to Asia and Africa. Bering Land Bridge is said to be 1000
Km wide from NORTH to SOUTH. However the only reason cited in support of such a
contention is compulsion of Biogeography. To quote:
“Some, like the ancient saber-toothed cats, have a recurring
geographical range: Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America. The only way they
could reach the New World was by the Bering land
bridge. Had this bridge not existed at that time, the fauna of the world would
be very different.”
There is no independent geological or
geographical evidence to support existence of Bering Land Bridge. Hence the
only difficult with this presumption is that presumes the fact it has to prove.
Despite an excellent
fossil record of the Equidae,
there are still many gaps in our evolutionary knowledge. Only the modern horse,
zebras, wild asses and donkey survive today, but many other lineages have
become extinct over the last 50,000 years. Detailed fossil information on the
rate and distribution of new equid species has also revealed that the
progression between species was not as smooth and consistent as was once
believed. Although some transitions, such as that of Dinohippus to Equus, indeed appear to be
gradual progressions, a number of others, such as that of Epihippus to Mesohippus, were relatively abrupt in geologic time, taking place over only a few million years. The change in
equids' traits was also not always a "straight line" from Eohippus to Equus:
some traits reversed themselves at various points in the evolution of new equid
species, such as size and the presence of facial fossae, and only in retrospect
can certain evolutionary trends be recognized.
Therefore all the accumulated evidences points only to
morphological trends and patterns in Equidae family on empirical basis and are
no evidence to conclude any straight line evolution from from the small, dog-sized, forest-dwelling Eohippus over geologic time scales to modern horse in accordance with Darwin’s Mechanism of
Evolution. Hence, the observed evolutionary morphological trends and patterns
lend no credibility to Darwin’s mechanism of Evolution. There is no evidence to
show that ancestors of modern horse actually migrated to Europe through Bering
Strait. In fact extinction of horses in North America 30 million years ago
precludes such migration. In fact, all the evidence points to correlations,
associations and correspondences; widely rampant in nature and for which no
rational explanations are presently available.
Cumulative evidence suggests some other mechanism of
evolution other than Darwinism. Observed morphological trends and patterns are
nothing more than correlations, associations and correspondences that are
commonly seen in our study of nature. Empirical data does not fit into Darwin’s
mechanism of evolution.
Author: Dr Mahesh C. Jain is a practicing
medical doctor and has written the book “Encounter of Science with Philosophy –
A synthetic view”. The book begins with first chapter devoted to scientifically
valid concept of God and then explains cosmic phenomena right from origin of
nature and universe up to origin of life and evolution of man. The book
includes several chapters devoted to auxiliary concepts and social sciences as
corollaries to the concept of God. This is the only book which deals with
origin of nature and universe from null. Thirtieth chapter of the book deals
with the subject matter of ‘Evolution of Life’.
http://curatio.in
