Page 655 - Atlas of Creation Volume 2

Harun Yahya

The oldest known fos-
sil bat, found in
Wyoming in the United
States. 50 million years
old, there is no differ-
ence between this fos-
sil and bats alive
today.

The fossil record of bats extends back to the early Eocene ... and has been documented ... on five continents ...
[A]ll fossil bats, even the oldest, are clearly fully developed bats and so they shed little light on the transi-
tion from their terrestrial ancestor. 129

And the evolutionary paleontologist L. R. Godfrey has this to say on the same subject:

There are some remarkably well preserved early Tertiary fossil bats, such as Icaronycteris index, but

Icaronycteris tells us nothing about the evolution of flight in bats because it was a perfectly good flying
bat. 130

Evolutionist scientist Jeff Hecht confesses the same problem in a 1998 New Scientist article:

[T]he origins of bats have been a puzzle. Even the earliest bat fossils, from about 50 million years ago, have
wings that closely resemble those of modern bats. 131

In short, bats' complex bodily systems cannot have emerged through evolution, and the fossil record
demonstrates that no such thing happened. On the contrary, the first bats to have emerged in the world are
exactly the same as those of today. Bats have always existed as bats.

The Origin of Marine Mammals

Whales and dolphins belong to the order of marine mammals known as Cetacea. These creatures are clas-
sified as mammals because, just like land-dwelling mammals, they give live birth to their young and nurse
them, they have lungs to breathe with, and they regulate their body temperature. For evolutionists, the ori-

gin of marine mammals has been one of the most difficult issues to explain. In many evolutionist sources, it
is asserted that the ancestors of cetaceans left the land and evolved into marine mammals over a long period
of time. Accordingly, marine mammals followed a path contrary to the transition from water to land, and un-
derwent a second evolutionary process, returning to the water. This theory both lacks paleontological evi-

dence and is self-contradictory. Thus, evolutionists have been silenced on this issue for a long time.
However, an evolutionist hype about the origin of marine mammals broke out in the 90's, argued to be
based on some new fossil findings of the 80's like Pakicetus and Ambulocetus. These evidently quadrupedal
and terrestrial extinct mammals were alleged to be the ancestors of whales and thus many evolutionist
sources did not hesitate to call them "walking whales." (In fact the full name, Ambulocetus natans, means
"walking and swimming whale.") Popular means of evolutionist indoctrination further vulgarized the story.

National Geographic in its November 2001 issue, finally declared the full evolutionist scenario on the
"Evolution of Whales."
Nevertheless, the scenario was based on evolutionist prejudice, not scientific evidence.

Adnan Oktar 653