Crane Fly Fossil

The recent discovery of fossilized crane flies has shed new light on the design of insect eyes, which experts overlooked until now. In the back of these supposedly 54-million-year-old fossilized eyes, researchers discovered a dark pigment called melanin.

A fossilized crane fly found in Denmark has evolutionists taking a second look at eye design.

Melanin is common in the eyes of vertebrates like birds and mammals but had never been detected in insect eyes. Intrigued, the investigators looked closer at living crane flies and found melanin there too. Melanin plays an important role in vertebrate eyes: it keeps stray light from bouncing around in the eyeball and interfering with our vision. Scientists have long thought that insect eyes did this with a different molecule called ommochrome—which is in keeping with evolutionary logic, since insect eyes supposedly arose independently from vertebrate eyes. However, the fossilized crane fly eyes used not only ommochrome but also melanin, like our eyes.

How can unrelated creatures have similar features? Enter convergent evolution, the popular idea among evolutionists that different creatures independently evolve similar biological structures to solve similar problems.

Biblical creationists have a more reasonable explanation. The common Designer, who created both the fly and all the vertebrates, gave them the same excellent design that reflects his wisdom.

This article was taken from Answers magazine, January–February, 2020, 22.