Platypus Tooth Bites Hard into Long-Held Beliefs

People have often asked sceptically why we don’t find fossils of kangaroos or platypuses, for example, anywhere but in Australia. Surely, they say, this means they must have evolved in Australia.

However, we don’t find lion fossils in the Middle East where they are known to have lived—fossilization requires special conditions. In the biblical model, creatures such as platypuses may well have reached other parts of the world—Australia is simply the only place where they have survived. So while it is not necessary to find their fossils anywhere else, if a few such fossils were found it would support the biblical model, but would be a big blow to those who say they must have evolved here.

Now South American scientists have discovered a fossil platypus tooth in Patagonia, near the tip of South America.¹ Not surprisingly, it ‘has sent shock waves through the scientific community’.² Platypus teeth are unique and distinctive, with a V-shaped, double-crested blade system. The find has been confirmed by the Royal Zoological Society in Sydney, Australia.

The question of how the kangaroo, platypus, etc., travelled to Australia is the subject of chapter 12 of The Answers Book. Whether evolutionists believe the platypus evolved in South America or Australia, they face the same question (with the same possible answers) as creationists do, namely how it crossed over the ocean.

References

1. New Scientist, August 24, 1991 . Return to text
2. The Daily Telegraph-Mirror (Sydney), August 26, 1991. Return to text