Mammalian Vertebrate Study Knocks Macro-Evolutionary Paradigm Flat on its Back

A study of spine evolution in mammals has produced results opposite those expected under the current evolutionary paradigm. As usual, the scientists made a brave show of trying to cram their results into the framework of what is allowable under a strictly naturalistic view of things. But even as they did so they had to use language evocative of intelligent design and collaboration. It was the language that was fitting to use to describe what had happened.

They knew that amphibians and living reptiles such as lizards, have a single type of vertebrae. Mammals have five different types and this allows the mammalian form to be adapted for living in many kinds of environments and moving about in a multitude of ways. The same can be said for mammal vs. reptile teeth by the way. Its as if Whoever was running the show decided that the mammal line was the one They were most interested in developing and mostly left the reptiles alone while continuing to develop the mammals.

Three, Four, Five types of vertebrae - coming 200 million years after the form is set.

Of course it makes little sense that a neutral force would concentrate development on one line to the exclusion of others. So far as they can tell there is no reason why evolution, if it can produce various types of teeth and vertebrate to help mammals, could not have done the same for reptiles. (EDITORS NOTE: Tooth diversity shows up early but appears to have been lost in reptiles many millions of years ago. Never to be regained? ) And yet despite the various forms of reptiles over the ages, the type seems to be locked into one basic shape of tooth per mouth and one form of vertebrate in each kind of reptile. If evolution was really powerful enough to create all that other change, why not vertebrae and teeth?

Scientists theorized that there was an advantage built into the line leading to mammals right from the beginning. This would not solve the problem explained in the paragraph above, but it would push it back in time. Then they could at least appeal to the idea that the changes which led to the mammalian line were simply changes in form to existing parts. That is, they were expecting to find that the line leading to mammals always had five different kinds of vertebrae for evolution to work with, and in time it utilized those differences due to evolutionary forces. Or as the article put it..

While mammal backbones are specialized, the regions that underlie them were believed to be ancient, dating back to the earliest land animals.
Mammals made the most of the existing anatomical blueprint, or so scientists believed. However, the new study is challenging this idea by looking into the fossil record.

Well, they discovered differently. What they consider the earliest ancestors of the mammal line had three types of vertebrae, not five. While that is more than the reptiles started with, it still means that new types of vertebrae popped up long after the purported line to mammals was established. Their expectation was that by then evolution should have just been adapting existing parts, not creating new categories of them. The article speaks of "dramatic changes" in the line leading to mammals. How did these changes occur? Here is where they start using the language of intelligent design in order to adequately describe what they see in the record...

"There appears to be some sort of cross-talk during development between the tissues that form the vertebrae and the shoulder blade," Pierce said. "We think this interaction resulted in the addition of a region near the shoulder as the forelimbs of our ancestors evolved to take on new shapes and functions."

Later, a region emerged near the pelvis. "It is this last region, the ribless lumbar region, that appears to be able to adapt the most to different environments," said Pierce."

So God didn't "make" the new types of vertebrae on these creatures, they made themselves by their parts talking to each other! They pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps in Lamarkian fashion. But apparently the body parts of reptiles don't have this same conversational ability. Not that the versatility of mammals comes from evolution. Here is an article about a study showing that mammal fore-limbs were diversified before the dinosaurs! The birds, reptiles and amphibians still haven't seemed to have caught up.

The article ends by making a vague remark about how HOX genes may be involved in the change. I am sure they are, but that is not a scientific standard for explanations, in particular if one is going to assume that evolution is the sole force editing the HOX genes. I find that macro-evolution has different standard of proof than the rest of science. In macro-evolution, if they can imagine a way it might have happened, it is assumed to be true. Subject to further testing still to be sure, but otherwise accepted.

I look at the same evidence and it seems to be screaming Divine Intent, not random process. This would point to at least Theistic guiding of evolution. In truth there are some gray areas between Theistic Evolution, Intelligent Design, and Special Creation and in terms of this evidence its hard to say which it is most pointing to, but its sure not pointing to the naturalistic model.

Scripture of course speaks to the question of the emergence of animal forms, though it too does not give great detail. I am speaking of Genesis chapter one here, under the Christ-centered model for early Genesis chapter two is a special smaller and more limited creation account within the larger account in chapter one. Genesis chapter one says both that God commanded the earth to bring forth living creatures and that God made living creatures after their kind. So rather than body parts talking to one another to produce new features, as the scientist quoted above suggested, God and the earth were communicating to do so. The details on that are left off, but its not naturalistic evolution, and its not even theistic evolution in the most commonly accepted sense of God simply lining the dominoes up and tipping the first one and from there watching things go on their own. He pops up later in the story and does things- like for example, make a class of creatures with new types of vertebrae.

UPDATE: 2021 study finds that the purported ancestors of mammals did not inherit any reptile-like traits in their back-bones. Rather, reptiles, mammals, and synapsids all have distinctly different backbones. Of course they herald it as progress for "understanding evolution" but what really happened was that a hypothesis for how non-mammal spines evolved into mammal spines was shot down.