Page 614 - Atlas of Creation Volume 1
P. 614
This insect was fossilized while spray-
ing its enemy with a defensivechemical
secretion.
SOLDIER BEETLE
Age: 100 million years old
Location: Myanmar
Period: Cretaceous
The beetle pictured, a member of the Cantharidae family, is important evidence that soldier beetles
were using their same chemical defense mechanism 100 million years ago. According to a scien-
tific paper published by Oregon University’s George Poinar, an authority on amber, specimens of
insects that used chemical defenses had previously been discovered in the fossil record. For ex-
ample, the poison sacs of various squids of the Jurassic period, soldier termites in Dominican am-
bers contained the defensive secretions. Other Dominican ambers had been discovered contain-
ing various kinds of worms that also employed a similar mechanism. But no such fossil specimen
of that age of a soldier beetle using that mechanism had ever been encountered before.
If any living thing made full use of an exceptionally complex defense mechanism 100 million
years ago—back when evolutionists maintain that life was supposedly very primitive—then it is
of course impossible to use evolution to explain it.
612 Atlas of Creation
