Page 732 - Atlas of Creation Volume 2

specimens living in our own time. An article published in Science News says:

Both blue-green algae and bacteria fossils dating back 3.4 billion years
have been found in rocks from S. Africa. Even more intriguing, the pleu-
rocapsalean algae turned out to be almost identical to modern pleuro-
capsalean algae at the family and possibly even at the generic level. 305

The German biologist Hoimar von Ditfurth makes this com-
ment on the complex structure of so-called "primitive" algae:

The oldest fossils so far discovered are objects fossilized in minerals
which belong to blue green algae, more than 3 billion years old. No
matter how primitive they are, they still represent rather compli-
cated and expertly organized forms of life. 306

Evolutionary biologists consider that the algae in question

gave rise over time to other marine plants and moved to the land
some 450 million years ago. However, just like the scenario of ani-
mals moving from water onto the land, the idea that plants moved
from water to the land is another fantasy. Both scenarios are invalid
and inconsistent. Evolutionist sources usually try to gloss over the
subject with such fantastical and unscientific comments as "algae in

some way moved onto the land and adapted to it." But there are a large
number of obstacles that make this transition quite impossible. Let us have a
short look at the most important of them. Free-swimming algae in
1- The danger of drying out: For a plant which lives in water to be able to live on the ocean
land, its surface has first of all to be protected from water loss. Otherwise the plant

will dry out. Land plants are provided with special systems to prevent this from happening. There are very im-
portant details in these systems. For example, this protection must happen in such a way that important gases
such as oxygen and carbon dioxide are able to leave and enter the plant freely. At the same time, it is important
that evaporation be prevented. If a plant does not possess such a system, it cannot wait millions of years to de-
velop one. In such a situation, the plant will soon dry up and die.
2- Feeding: Marine plants take the water and minerals they need directly from the water they are in. For

this reason, any algae which tried to live on land would have a food problem. They could not live without re-
solving it.
3- Reproduction: Algae, with their short life span, have no chance of reproducing on land, because, as in all
their functions, algae also use water to disperse their reproductive cells. In order to be able to reproduce on

land, they would need to possess multicellular reproductive cells like those of land plants, which are covered
by a protective layer of cells. Lacking these, any algae which found themselves on land would be unable to pro-
tect their reproductive cells from danger.
4- Protection from oxygen: Any algae which arrived on land would have taken in oxygen in a decomposed
form up until that point. According to the evolutionists' scenario, now they would have to take in oxygen in a
form they had never encountered before, in other words, directly from the atmosphere. As we know, under

normal conditions the oxygen in the atmosphere has a poisoning effect on organic substances. Living things
which live on land possess systems which stop them being harmed by it. But algae are marine plants, which
means they do not possess the enzymes to protect them from the harmful effects of oxygen. So, as soon as they
arrived on land, it would be impossible for them to avoid these effects. Neither is there any question of their
waiting for such a system to develop, because they could not survive on land long enough for that to happen.

There is yet another reason why the claim that algae moved from the ocean to the land inconsistent—
namely, the absence of a natural agent to make such a transition necessary. Let us imagine the natural environ-
ment of algae 450 million years ago. The waters of the sea offer them an ideal environment. For instance, the
water isolates and protects them from extreme heat, and offers them all kinds of minerals they need. And, at the
same time, they can absorb the sunlight by means of photosynthesis and make their own carbohydrates (sugar

730 Atlas of Creation Vol. 2