Snakes and Turtles

Furthermore, there are impassable boundaries between very different orders of reptiles such as snakes, crocodiles, dinosaurs, and lizards. Each one of these different orders appears all of a sudden in the fossil record, and with very different structures. Looking at the structures in these very different groups, evolutionists go on to imagine the evolutionary processes that might have happened. But these hypotheses are not reflected in the fossil record. For instance, one widespread evolutionary assumption is that snakes evolved from lizards which gradually lost their legs. But evolutionists are unable to answer the question of what "advantage" could accrue to a lizard which had gradually begun to lose its legs, and how this creature could be "preferred" by natural selection.

It remains to say that the oldest known snakes in the fossil record have no "intermediate form" characteristics, and are no different from snakes of our own time. The oldest known snake fossil is Dinilysia, found in Upper Cretaceous rocks in South America. Robert Carroll accepts that this creature "shows a fairly advanced stage of evolution of these features [the specialized features of the skull of snakes],"97 in other words that it already possesses all the characteristics of modern snakes.

Another order of reptile is turtles, which emerge in the fossil record together with the shells which are so characteristic of them. Evolutionist sources state that "Unfortunately, the origin of this highly successful order is obscured by the lack of early fossils, although turtles leave more and better fossil remains than do other vertebrates. By the middle of the Triassic Period (about 200,000,000 years ago) turtles were numerous and in possession of basic turtle characteristics… Intermediates between turtles and cotylosaurs, reptiles from which turtles [supposedly] sprang, are entirely lacking."98

Thus Robert Carroll is also forced to say that the earliest turtles are encountered in Triassic formations in Germany and that these are easily distinguished from other species by means of their hard shells, which are very similar to those of specimens living today. He then goes on to say that no trace of earlier or more primitive turtles has ever been identified, although turtles fossilize very easily and are easily recognized even if only very small parts are found.99

All these types of living things emerged suddenly and independently. This fact is a scientific proof that they were created.

Above, a freshwater turtle, some 45 million years old, found in Germany. On the right the remains of the oldest known marine turtle. This 110-million-year-old fossil, found in Brazil, is identical to specimens living today.