Creation Research Society Quarterly
Volume 41, No. 1 — June 2004
© 2004 Creation Research Society
74
Creation Research Society Quarterly
Rethinking DNA Similarities between Chimps and People: “No Time”
to Evolve Humans from Australopithecines
For a number of years now we have been told that the DNA
of chimp and human have been up to and over 99 percent
the same depending on which item you read. Now we are
told that all of this is wrong because there is need to drop
this similarity figure by 5 percent bringing it down to 95
percent (Coghlan, 2002, p.20).
The so-called common ancestor of chimp and human
has long been said to have lived some 7 million years ago,
but a recent discovery raises serious doubts. In Wood (2002)
we are told that a fossil called Sahelanthropus tchadensis
looks from the back of the skull like a chimp, but the face
is like that of an Australopithecus from 1.7 million years
ago. At this stage fossils should have been starting to show
only a few signs of being hominids and should not have
had a face of a hominid (Australopithecus) which is supposedly less than one-third of its geological age. This fossil
plays havoc we are told with the one line of descent model
from a common ancestor. So, evolutionists assert that anything can pop up at almost any time in order to help cope
with appearances of fossil forms like this one; and this is
desperate stuff!
We know that chimps are non-human, and this 7 million year old fossil was chimp-like from the back and the
face having the same Australopithecine pattern that was
seen in fossils right up to 5.5 million years later (1.5 million years ago) when the last Australopithecine fossil is recorded. This means that Australopithecines were non-human all the way through theoretical “geologic time.”
To add to all of this, a fossil Australopithecus africanus
from Sterkfontein known years ago as “Mrs Pleas” and now
known as “little foot,” was once dated at 3.5 million years
old, but is now put more recently at 2.4 million years
(Eartherley, 2002, p. 13). The other interesting thing about
!
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the 2.4 million year old date is that “little foot” is viewed by
evolutionists to be too young to be on the human line. It is,
therefore, only a cousin of man and not an ancestor. The
hypothetical date of 2.4 million years for “little foot” is also
of interest, because finding a fossil at 2.4 million years of a
form that is more advanced than the Australopithecines
would be a near death blow for the theory of evolution.
But we know that Homo erectus skulls have been found in
Dmanisi George and are assumed to be 1.7 million years
old. Therefore Homo erectus must go back to and likely
beyond the 2 million year mark. Back to 1.9 million assumed years in Africa and in the Middle East hand axes
were found (Calder, 1984, p.11). We must conclude that
Homo erectus goes back before the 2 million year mark
and thus becomes almost contemporary with Australopithicus, its supposed ancestor. This casts serious doubt on
the whole theory of evolution altogether.
Acknowledgments
I thank George Howe for editorial assistance and Sharron
Hotchkiss for computer typing.
References
Calder, N. 1984. Timescale. Chatto and Windus Hogarth Press.
London.
Coghlan, A. 2002. Not such close cousins after all. New Scientists 175 (2362):20.
Eartherley, D. 2002. Is little foot a cousin? New Scientist.
Wood, B. 2002. Hominid revelations from Chad. Nature
418:133–135.
Colin Brown
61 Derby Road, Golborne, Warrington
WA3-3LD, England, U.K.
One of the most spectacular floods in prehistoric times, besides the Genesis
Flood, was the great Lake Missoula flood, which left its mark in the Channeled
Scabland of the Pacific Northwest in the United States. However, the evidence
was the subject of intense controversy for 40 years before being accepted. In
this book, Michael Oard discusses not only the abundant evidence, which at the
time was considered to be “too biblical,” but also the circumstances surrounding the controversy.
A chapter is dedicated to other ice age floods, and evidence of the Genesis
Flood is presented, consisting generally of new information from the field of
geomorphology. Another chapter is devoted to a defense of the short time scale
of Scripture.