Pink Iguana Throws Off Scientists

Though they call the Galápagos Islands home, the pink iguana eluded famous visitor Charles Darwin during his 1835 visit and weren’t discovered until 1986. The supposed irony is that while the Galápagos gave Darwin the animal basis for natural selection (through his observation of birds and tortoises, for example), scientists now suggest that Galápagos iguanas diverged earlier than any of those other animal populations.

Gentile’s team believes pink iguanas split from others around 5.7 million years ago.

The reason for Darwin’s oversight is that pink iguanas have thus far only been found on the slopes of Volcano Wolf. Furthermore, today (at least) the pink iguana population is tiny: fewer than 100, according to Gabriele Gentile of the University of Rome Tor Vergata.

Gentile’s team believes pink iguanas split from others around 5.7 million years ago. Their conclusion comes from DNA analysis, which reveals the pink iguana is “far more distinct” than other iguana groups are. Differences such as a unique crest shape, more complex courtship behavior, and the lack of cross-breeding with other groups explain the genetic divergence; the estimate of 5.7 million years is based on the flawed idea of the “molecular clock” that presupposes old-ages and evolution.

But while the molecular clock has problems of its own, in this case it yields a contradiction within the evolutionary paradigm, because at 5.7 million years ago “all of the western islands of the archipelago did not exist,” explains Gentile. “That’s a conundrum, because it’s now only inhabiting one part of Isabela that formed less than half a million years ago.”

The team has come up with a work-around to the “conundrum,” however; they speculate that the pink iguana originally diverged on an island that is now underwater, then later transitioned to its current home.

That may satisfy evolutionists, but to us it serves as a reminder of how evolutionists, just like creationists, interpret the data through a presupposed paradigm. Creationists, who presuppose God’s Word the Bible, can describe the speciation through the mechanisms of natural selection and, in this case, likely allopatry just as well as evolutionists; in no case is there a sign of any actual “evolution” (in the sense of new genetic information arising) in iguana populations.

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