Page 139 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

Harun Yahya

COELACANTH

Age: 95 million years

Period: Cretaceous

Location: Hjoula, Lebanon
Up to 1938, it was believed that coelacanth fossils represented the solution to a serious problem for

evolutionists, who needed evidence documenting the imaginary emergence of living things from the
sea onto dry land. They therefore took fossils of the coelacanth, which they believed was well suited to
this scenario, and began making propaganda regarding them. They interpreted the animal’s fins as
"feet about to walk" and another unidentified organ as "a primitive lung."
Yet striking proof soon emerged that none of these interpretations had any validity at all. The capture
by fisherman of a living coelacanth in 1938 came as a terrible disappointment to evolutionists. James
Leonard Brierley Smith, a professor in the Rhodes University Chemistry Faculty, expressed his amaze-
ment in these words:

"Although I had come prepared, that first sight hit me like a white-hot blast and made me feel shaky and
queer, my body tingled. I stood as if stricken to stone. Yes, there was not a shadow of doubt, scale by scale,
bone by bone, fin by fin, it was a true Coelacanth." (Samantha Weinberg, A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for
the Coelacanth, New York: Perennial Publishing, 2001, p. 20)

Detailed examinations were conducted of the coelacanth’s structure and internal organs, which had no
primitive features as had been imagined and bore no intermediate-form characteristics of any imagi-
nary primitive forebear. The structure that evolutionists imagined to be a primitive lung was actually a
swim bladder filled with fat in the creature’s body. In addition, this creature, depicted as a prospective
reptile preparing to emerge onto dry land, was actually a bottom-dwelling fish inhabiting deep waters
and not rising above depths of 180 meters. Therefore, according to Dr. Millot, who conducted the in-
vestigation, this life form, which should have represented the "missing link," they were seeking, lacked
the primitive features of the living thing they claimed had evolved. (S. Weinberg, Op cit, p. 102) Very
simply, it was no intermediate form, but had existed with the same complex characteristics in deep wa-
ters for 400 million years.