Page 55 - Atlas of Creation Volume 2

Harun Yahya

that the group has remained almost unchanged since the Devonian Period (for 400 million years), it also re-
veals that there is a huge gap in the fossil record, since we lack the chain of ancestral fossils showing the
emergence of all the common features observed in all coelacanths. 30

New Information Concerning the Coelacanth

The latest information concerning the coelacanth's complex structure continues to represent a problem
for evolutionists. Professor Michael Bruton, director of the world-renowned South African JLB Smith
Institute of Ichthyology, says this about the complex characteristics of the coelacanth that have been discov-
ered:

Birth is one of the complex features of this creature. Coelacanths bring their young into the world by giving

birth to them. The eggs, the size of an orange, hatch inside the fish. The discovery has also been made that the
young are fed thanks to an organ in the mother's body resembling a placenta. As well as providing the young
with oxygen and food, the placenta is also a complex organ which removes wastes from respiration and di-
gestion from the babies' bodies. Fossil embryos from the Carboniferous period (360-290 million years ago)
show that this complex system existed long before mammals appeared. 31

The discovery that the coelacanth is sensitive to electromagnetic currents around it indicates the pres-
ence of a complex sensory organ. Looking at the nerves that connect the fish's rostral organ to its brain, sci-

The fossil pictured shows that the coela-
canth's scales have been fossilized in consid-
erable detail. To the side can be seen a
coelacanth scale. Despite the passage of hun-
dreds of millions of years, no change has
taken place in the coelacanth's structure.

Adnan Oktar 53