Living Fossils: Acer Monspessulanum

by Joachim Scheven on June 1, 1996

Originally published in Creation 18, no 3 (June 1996): 41.

Most of the public are unaware that there are literally thousands of different types of animals and plants which are alive and essentially unchanged from the way they appear as fossils. Such facts make it difficult to believe that these forms were separated by those imagined millions of evolutionary years.

Here is another example, courtesy of Dr Joachim Scheven, who oversees the world's largest collection of living fossils in his faith-funded creation museum LEBENDIGE VORWELT at Unterm Hagen 22, D-58119 Hagen, Germany.

The fossil maple leaf (Acer monspessulanum) on the left was found in Tertiary rock in southern France. It is supposedly millions of years old. Yet the same species of maple (right picture) lives today around the Mediterranean and has been photographed in climatically favoured south-west Germany where it has a northern outlier.

The overwhelming message of the fossil record is one of staying the same, not evolving. Of course, many types have gone extinct, and so are not found living. These types also show no sign of real evolution throughout their 'stay' in the record.