Extinction made fish evolve, according to articles in ScienceDaily 1 December 2014 and Fossil Science 6 December 2014, both entitled “Mass extinction led to many new species of bony fish”. The largest and most diverse group of vertebrate fish are the ray-finned fish – bony fish with body structures as variable of high speed tuna, bottom dwelling flatfish, snake-like eels and vertically swimming seahorses. The other main group of vertebrate fish is the cartilaginous fish, which includes sharks and rays.

In an attempt to find out why bony fish have become the most dominant and diverse form of fish palaeontologists from the University of Zurich have “evaluated the global scientific literature on bony and cartilaginous fish from the last 200 years and collected data on diversity and body size, the latter providing an indication of the fish’s position in the food chains in the seas and freshwater”. They then compared the relative diversity of fish in the Permian and Triassic periods, when a number of mass extinction events are believed to have occurred, and concluded that cartilaginous fish suffered badly during the Permian-Triassic extinction and have never really recovered, but ray finned fish rapidly diversified and developed new features. Carlo Romano commented: “Our results indicate that repeated extinction events played a key role in the development of today’s fish fauna”.

Fossil Science, ScienceDaily

Editorial Comment: The idea that extinctions led to the origin and development of other kinds of creatures is common in evolutionary theory. The most familiar version of this idea is that the demise of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period led to the rapid evolution of mammals and birds. Now the evolutionists want to apply it to bony fish.

However, it doesn’t matter what group of creatures you apply this logic to, extinction is not evolution, nor can it ever cause evolution. You need only ask the question: How does the absence of one kind of creature create the new genes in another creature that are needed for it to turn into a different kind? It is true that if an ecological niche becomes empty, then other already existing creatures may move into it, but an empty space cannot make new creatures appear that did not already exist.

The apparent appearance of new creatures in the fossil record is really only the result of the way rock layers have been classified the way Charles Lyell taught us: according to the fossils that are found in them, not because anyone observed new creatures coming into being. And so the circle goes round.

The belief in extinction-driven evolution is another example of how evolutionary theory has nothing to do with the real world of biology. Modern day ecologists, who study biodiversity, work hard to prevent extinctions. You never hear politically active environmentalists claiming the current rate of extinction is a good thing because many new creatures are about to evolve. In fact, extinctions are a reminder of how much the earth has gone downhill ever since God cursed the ground and later judged the whole earth with a flood because of mankind’s disobedience to our Creator. (Ref. fossils, ichthyology, degeneration)

Evidence News vol. 15 No. 1
4 February 2015
Creation Research Australia