Rediscovered 'Extinct' Tortoise Frustrates Darwinism | thebereancall.org

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Rediscovered 'Extinct' Tortoise Frustrates Darwinism [Excerpts]

Observing animals on the Galapagos Islands supposedly helped Charles Darwin come up with his theory of evolution by natural selection. But none of these animals have fulfilled the evolutionary interpretation Darwinists have placed on them, and recent evidence of a supposedly extinct Galapagos tortoise fills the same bill.

Researchers publishing in Current Biology found tell-tale genetic markers among the tortoise population that a purebred saddleback tortoise variety that was long thought extinct is actually alive somewhere on Volcano Wolf Island of the Galapagos Island chain (Garrick, R. C. et al. 2012, "Genetic rediscovery of an 'extinct' Galapagos giant tortoise species," Current Biology. 22, [1]: R10-R11). Galapagos tortoises have been protected for many years now.

The researchers, led by Yale University biologist Ryan Garrick, discovered hybrid tortoises in 2007 that retained traces of the "extinct" tortoise's DNA, which they compared to specimens from the nineteenth century. The team's latest study found more hybrid species, and they concluded that one of the immediate parents of these hybrids was a purebred saddleback (Khan, A. :Extinct' tortoises may still be roaming a Galapagos island," Los Angeles Times. Posted on articles.latimes.com January 13, 2012, accessed February 6, 2012).

Evolutionists and creationists would agree that the original tortoises that colonized each island have since diversified into different forms over the centuries. But the observed shape and size adjustments to the fully formed tortoise body plan do nothing to justify evolution's broadly sweeping narrative of tortoise origins. The discovery of DNA from a type of tortoise thought to be extinct only shows that the different tortoise "species" that have variously inhabited these island niches are really just varieties of the tortoise kind. The differences between them offer no evidence for the evolutionary conclusions Darwin drew from the Galapagos' creatures.

http://www.icr.org/article/6682/